Great! Ecosia works super well, and it feels good to not having to rely on google to find things. Only thing I’d wish for is that they’d have some map service or similar to find restaurants and shop. There is sadly no good replacement for google maps that I’ve found
this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2025
606 points (99.7% liked)
BuyFromEU
2449 readers
432 users here now
Welcome to BuyFromEU - A community dedicated to supporting European-made goods and services!
We also invite you to subscribe to:
Logo generated with mistral le chat Banner by Christian Lue on unsplash.com
founded 3 weeks ago
MODERATORS
Ecosia works well enough for me too. The tree planting thing should never be forgotten. The scope of their work is impressive and they're very transparent about their goals and funding. No other search engine comes close to that.
The tree planting sounds so much like greenwashing and an excuse to serve ads
200 million trees. Far from greenwashing.
Folks, critical thinking is more important than ever these days. Making conclusions based on a brain fart - when we have the internet at our fingertips - is partly why the world is the way it is.
I listened to a podcast a couple years ago. The founder talked about how he made sure that Ecosia can not be sold and monetized, he himself is not making much money from it. My english is not good enough to explain it in more detail. :)
I see greenwashing everywhere, but as far as I can tell from the podcast and their YouTube, this is legit.
You could also use open street maps. For mobile I recommend using Organic Maps.l Only problem is, that the search isn't that good.
Try Here WeGo maps, it's the closest one to Google maps but European
Its already been mentioned but if you don't need reviews you can use Here WeGo maps. Its a good alternative and with more users (who make fixes if something is missing) it'll get better and better
load more comments
(6 replies)
We will develop a privacy-first search index, which will be used by both Ecosia and Qwant, and unlike proprietary solutions, we are making the index available to others.
Both are great! In my experience Qwant gives better search results, so thats what i use. I even prefer Qwant's results over Google's. But Ecosia is a great option as well because of the tree planting.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Maybe I'll use Ecosia again
Good news, needs to happen as fast as possible.
France and Germany will have it this year, we'll have to see how it evolves further but hopefully its a success!
Anything that can displace American tech is good.
Any News on when this will go live?
It doesn't mention whether it'll be opensource or not. A proprietary search index that isn't USAian is probably better, but still opensource would be better.
Don't let perfect stand in the way of better I'd say, in the end both companies still need to make a return on investment
True, it's a first step in the right direction :)
So many people are happy here. I can understand why but quick reminder that Qwant is not privacy friendly like they claim to be and that the CEO is a bastard who threatened employees.
As for Ecosia, the only green they have is their name. Great they plant trees but they pushed AI so it's basically like if they are destroying the trees they planted.
There is a search engine with their own index from UK, privacy-friendly, it is called Mojeek. It is not as good as the others but I've been using it for maybe 4 months and it already improved a lot. They need users to give feedback and improve. Give it a try ! 😊
I don't know how far in the rabbithole I am, but at this point I feel like it's nearly impossible to find a company that doesn't have dirt on it in one way or another. There are alternatives in some domains, but for search engines, it's really narrowed down to Brave (which also have some not very nice people in it) and Duck duck go, which uses Bing. Which is basically pointless to me, not even talking about using UE products, for me, the best way to get some fresh air is to have companies that have their own search engines (so, not Bing or Google, this is why I don't use alternatives like Starpage or Searx) There's Mojeek, yes, but last time I used it, it was...really bad. I still encourage them tho! I'll give it another shot now.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
Sounds great! I've been happy with Ecosia currently. I tried Qwant, but I have strict privacy settings enabled in my browser and it says it couldn't get a secure connection. I'm sure it's 100% safe, but I just settled for Ecosia for now. Looking forward to trying out their new partnered search engine.
Search engines are dying, I doubt they'll have much relevance in ten years or so, unless something radically changes. Walled gardens, SEO, AI spam, and so on.
I wonder where the solution lies. The way the modern internet works is completely hostile to the idea of crawler-based search engines, so I feel like the focus should be on creating an alternative, people-first internet which is completely hostile to brands, corporations and advertisers, ran by communities and individuals, etc.
load more comments
(5 replies)
Now if only anyone of them would offer a paid ad-free option. I'd drop Kagi in an instant
Hey! Just coming back real quick to let you know they do use Yandex API which is russian. https://kagifeedback.org/d/5445-reconsider-yandex-integration-due-to-the-geopolitical-status-quo
I know, that's part of the reason why I want to ditch kagi, but I despise ads. Nothing good ever comes from ads.
Perhaps send their support an email about it to see what they say
Pity they aren't on mastodon :/
load more comments
(24 replies)
Was using startpage the entire time but because of this i'll try out qwant.
Startpage is also majorly American owned, so good to step away from it!
Qwant is actually pretty decent compared to the competition.
Good thing I recently changed my standard search engine to Wcosia!
This is the way! Excited to try it!
view more: next ›