My personal experience using Ecosia
To be perfectly honest, while I had heard of Ecosia many years ago, I hadn’t really used it until a few months ago. But now I’ve used the search engine and the web browser pretty extensively—and while there are times when I return to Google, Ecosia is pretty good overall.
The most obvious takeaway is that when using Ecosia, you know you’re doing some good for the world. Google, Microsoft, and other big tech companies may donate to good causes, but their primary mission is to rake in huge profits. That’s not the case with Ecosia.
Dave Parrack / Foundry
I’d urge anyone seeking to switch to Ecosia to explore the settings and tweak them to make Ecosia work for you. For example, I changed the Search region from the United Kingdom to “All Regions.” I also enabled Personalized search results, which is disabled by default.
As for the Ecosia browser, I really enjoy the simple, pared-down interface. Google Chrome—my usual go-to browser—can be a little busy at times. And while I need Chrome’s extra features for work, I use Ecosia to browse the web when I want a more casual, laid-back experience.
Dave Parrack / Foundry
Ultimately, it feels good knowing that my web searches throughout the day are benefiting the world in a real, tangible way—certainly a more positive impact than searching with Google.
If you don’t care about climate change, deforestation, or renewable energy, then you obviously won’t appreciate Ecosia’s raison d’être. But if you, like me, want to make small but effective changes to help make the world a better place, Ecosia is worth using.
Further reading: Sick of Google? Try one of these search engines
