Microsoft lost half marks under several Ethical Consumer rating categories including Environmental Reporting, Pollution & Toxics and Supply Chain Management. Ecosia didn’t appear to provide any further information about this issue. However, there are several routes to carbon neutrality - some involve burning fossil fuels, and then paying the offsetting costs later. However, does Microsoft, on which Ecosia is reliant, have the same green credentials?Įcosia’s website states that Microsoft Bing had committed to making all its operations carbon neutral, including its search Bing. Excess energy is fed back into the grid, and Ecosia views this as helping the transition to a renewable future. It claims to produce twice as much solar power than is needed to power all Ecosia searches.
Ecosia says that it was built on the premise that profits wouldn’t be taken out of the company.
A positive approach to financesĮcosia is a certified B-Corporation, which we believe shows the company has made a commitment to ethical behaviour. You can read about these below and on the Microsoft company profile page. These are categories where Microsoft scored a worst rating on our database. How does Ecosia score on our ethical ranking system?Įcosia has an Ethiscore of 11 but Ecosia's relationship with Microsoft, which scores just 6.5, has an impact on its score.ĭue to Ecosia’s relationship with Bing it was marked down in a number of Ethical Consumer categories: Climate Change, Arms and Military Supply, Human Rights, Anti-Social Finance, Controversial Technologies, Tax Conduct and Political Activities. (And random ad clicking doesn’t work, according to the Ecosia website!) As mentioned before though, if you don’t click on ads you’re not making Ecosia money, so you’re not helping to plant trees. It’s estimated to take about 45 searches for Ecosia to generate the revenue for a tree to be planted. Partner names are made public, as is the amount of funding sent to them. Ecosia pays partners across the globe to plant trees and bring forests back to life, through activities like firefighting and regeneration. The total money spent on this is listed every month on its website. At the time of writing, the company claims to have planted 120,323,000 trees!Įcosia says 80% of its advertising profits are used to plant trees. Does Ecosia really plant trees when you search?Įcosia’s website says “Plant trees while you search the web”. It is the ad revenue that enables them to plant trees.
Therefore if you use the search engine but don’t click on ads, Ecosia won’t make any money and therefore won't be planting any additional trees. The only way that Ecosia raises money is through clicks on advertisements. The adverts are generated by Bing, and when you click on one Ecosia receives a share of the revenue generated by the click (and the rest of the revenue generated from the click goes to Bing). Ad revenues from BingĮcosia’s revenue largely comes from Bing’s advertisements. In fact, at the end of 2020, Ecosia was said to have a 0.28% share of the search engine market in the UK. Unless it develops its own matrix to produce its own search results - an astonishingly enormous undertaking - then it will only ever constitute limited fringe competition to big players like Google and Bing. This approach to search is quite common - Yahoo and DuckDuckGo also have a ‘syndication agreement’ with Bing, meaning they pay for the right to use Bing’s technology. Ecosia doesn’t generate its own web results - instead it has a partnership with Bing, meaning that Bing provides both the results and advertisements that you see.Īs Ecosia doesn’t develop its own webpage results index, technologically speaking it’s not really a competitor in the world of search engines. When you search Ecosia you’re actually searching Microsoft Bing. Ecosia, which bills itself as 'the search engine that plants trees', relies almost entirely on Microsoft Bing technology.
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