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qwerty
Aug '19
1

So I found out about Ecosia4 a while ago and it's one of those things that just makes me really optimistic about humanity ~

Basically it's a search engine that uses the profits from search ads to plant trees by partnering with other organizations and initiatives around the world. Not only that, but they often choose projects that also help farmers in poor communities to earn more sustainable income and/or protect endangered species, and they are transparent about their finances.

They're also pretty privacy-centered like DuckDuckGo, which I've used for a long time, mostly to boycott Google.

Anyway, it's got me thinking about how we choose search engines. Obviously Google is the biggest. But do you ever use a different search engine? Why or why not? Do you find the performance differences between search engines to be significant, or marginal?

Personally I avoid Google because I don't like giant monopolies, targeted ads, or having my search results potentially closing me into an echo chamber. Of course it's practically impossible to avoid all of Google's products, but since a significant part of their revenue comes from search ads it's better than nothing ¯_(ツ)_/¯

That said I have to admit Google's image search is more intelligent than others. But I'm willing to give that up for the other benefits of alternative search engines (and I can always use Pinterest for finding images, which is even better)

What do you think?

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Trevor
Aug '19

I use ecosia, didn't take me much convincing despite the somewhat less intelligent results, however ecosia's efforts are nearly a drop in the ocean for the problem, as in not nearly enough people are using it or engines like it.

I have some friends who prefer to use Mozilla fire fox because of how google consumes their RAM and how fire fox is open source.

qwerty
Aug '19

I use Firefox too, although there have been instances when I've had to use Chrome for something that doesn't work properly on Firefox.

As for Ecosia being just a drop in the bucket... yeah. Definitely it's not going to come close to solving environmental sustainability by itself, although I don't think that can be expected from any individual project or company. It does seem to be growing exponentially though, so maybe at some point it will become more significant if enough people use it ^^

Even if it just became big enough to become a thorn in Google's side, prompting Google to improve its relative brand image by adopting better sustainability practices, that'd be a win...

tchotchkeco
Aug '19

Ive tried pretty much every search engine out there but rn I use DuckDuckGo and like it for the most part. I just recently heard of Ecosia but really liked the idea of it. So I maybe using give that a go tomorrow. I like the idea of it and wouldn’t mind supporting something like that.

nostalgicroxas
Aug '19
Trevor

If you're concerned about RAM branch into "brave" (chrome alternative) and "palemoon" (firefox alternative). Both are safer, and less demanding on your CPU/RAM.

I've tried using a search engine that each search you do with an account earns a penny, and that money will get sent to the charity that you've chosen - mine being NaNoWriMo. I honestly forget to use it a lot of the time OTL

Trevor
Aug '19

well I don't use fire fox, my friend does, but okay. I'll tell them about those

sekabead
Aug '19

Duckduckgo still leads me to phishing sites -_- Kudos for their effort on privacy though (if their claim to be believed). I Increasingly hate google because the way their heuristic works, it tries to trap me in filter bubble even tighter-even if I use incognito mode. Worse they decided to populate page 1 with even more results in my mother language, whereas I'm actually looking for english, even though I'm already clicking that "looking for english?", my search query is in english, and my google page is already in english. Google gives me overall impression that it's trying to get me buying something. Overall, my experiences of using Google for research become worse and worse. Still use it for online shopping though :stuck_out_tongue:

I've tried ecosia and other obscure engines, but their result is still mediocre at best. But Google Scholar is different. Looks like that part of Google is still "kind" in my opinion, not too much executive meddling in there.