How the worlds largest green search engine is [605781]

How the world’s largest green search engine is
fighting climate change
By Heather Farmbrough, Green Tech, Business writer in Europe ,
November 10
https://www.forbes.com/sites/heatherfarmbrough/2020/11/10/fighting -climate –
change -with-the-worlds -largest -green -search-engine/
Bria Simion SAS

The article raises some concerns related to climate change and introduce an aid
which is at hand of every internet user. The tool described in the article is called
Ecosia.
Ecosia is a search engine and a browser plugin based in Berlin, Germany, that
donates 80% or more of its profits to nonprofit organizations that focus on
reforestation and planting trees where they are needed most. It considers itself a
social business, is CO2 -negative and claims t o support full financial transparency
and protect the privacy of its users. [1]
Overview of climate change impact created by internet
Internet use is responsible for the release of more than 830 million tons of carbon
dioxide each year into the atmosphere, or around 4% of global greenhouse gas
emissions. For creating a proper context here are some interesting facts:
➢ Internet’s carbon footprint is greater than that of air travel.
➢ If every adult in the UK sent one less “thank you” email, it could s ave
16,433 tonnes of carbon a year – the equivalent to taking 3,334 diesel cars
off the road
➢ Pornography accounts for a third of video streaming traffic, generating as
much carbon dioxide as Belgium in a year
While many companies claim to power their data centre’s renewable energy, in
some parts of the world they are still largely powered from the burning of fossil
fuels .

Internet searching is another tricky area. A decade ago, each internet search had a
footprint of 0.2g CO2e, according to figures release d by Google. Today, Google
uses a mixture of renewable energy and carbon offsetting to reduce the carbon
footprint of its operations, while Microsoft, which owns the Bing search engine,
has promised to become carbon negative by 2030, and efforts are underw ay to
investigate whether this footprint is now higher or lower.
Benefits and claims
Newer search engines, however, are attempting to set themselves apart as greener
options from the outset. Ecosia, for example, says it will plant a tree for searches it
performs. This sort of carbon offsetting can help to remove carbon from the
atmosphere, but the success of these projects often depends on how long the trees
grow for and what happens to them when they are chopped down.
Some of t he benefits and claims of using Ecosia:
➢ Plant trees by doing nothing – 45 searches through the world’s biggest not –
for-profit search engine Ecosia to plant a tree
➢ Feel less guilty about your carbon footprint – Each search with Ecosia
removes roughly 1 kg of CO2 from the ai r
➢ Support an ethical internet -data protection and the right to remain
anonymous online
➢ Get female developers into tech – Ecosia is working towards a 50/50
gender split among its coders
➢ Help women in rural communities to earn an income and be financially
independent
➢ Hack capitalism – Ecosia is a social business that gives its profits away.
➢ Around 80% of the profits are spent directly on tree planting projects
all around the world

Critical analysis
The article highlights very often the fact that forests and in general planting tree is
very important in tackling climate change . At a first glance that seems reasonably,
but what concerns me is that all the arguments are openly misleading people about
their goals and intentions. For example, they advertise that they planted enough
trees to swallow up one point five million tons of CO2, which sounds big until you
realize that considering that is less that half of a tenth of a percent of the human

overage in terms of where we need to be to save the planet, and considering this is
them after a decade of trying … this isn’t actually helping anything. The fact that
they use Bing instead of Google, which means they are using non -renewable
sources to power their searches and super inefficient power u sage in general, is
something they could change easily if they were willing to but comes down to a
“small” company being unable to put profit aside over the planet. Which is fine I
guess, but when you build a company on this is the eco answer it reads as a giant
scam when you openly ignore the environmental impact of what you offer to make
more money. And remember, they don’t get paid when you search, they get paid
when they get you distracted with what you didn’t realize was an advertisement, so
plenty of the people who use the engine but are smart enough to figure out the ads
burn energy without planting anything !
Another claim that mislead readers is that “ Unlike Google and other commercial
search engines, Ecosia anonymises all searches, and does not sell any personal data
about its 15 million plus users to advertisers. ”
They claim that they don't create profiles but they follow that statement with a
eyebrow raising sentence. "We actually anonymize all searches within one
week".What this says is that they do indeed store your searches permanently and
they do so non anonymized for a full week.This is a problem not only because they
store your searches tied to you for a full week but studies [2] have shown that
anonymous data isn't really anonymous.
The claim that they don’t sell any personal data to a dvertiser is bold, a lot of
companies make to show they're serious about privacy but selling is not the only
thing you can do with data. Unfortunately, companies can share data with other
companies, either d irectly or indirectly, and still say they told the truth because
they didn't sell it for money. On top of sharing your searches with Microsoft, Bing
has your non anonymized searches and are subject to Microsofts privacy policy.
Another issue that concerns me with these types of articles and companies is that
they mislead people in believing that these are the right ways in fighting climate
change. If you want to help the environment d on’t buy that more consumption
done slightly differently will fix our pro blems of over consumption . Reduce
community power usage in general by fighting for renewable sources of energy for
everything that you have access to . You cannot consume your way out of over
consumption. Instead of using a search engine find places near yo u to do
ecological volunteer work , consume less and responsible .

References
[1]Wikipedia. Ecosia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosia
[2] https://www.fastcompany.com/90278465/sorry -your-data-can-still-be-
identified -even -its-anonymized