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OK, Ecosia is a bit less good than Google, but I'm gonna keep with it..

I came across this video about Ecosia, a tree planting search engine:


Short synopsis:

Participate in reforestation by changing your default search engine to Ecosia. Really, that's all it takes!
http://ecosia.org
Ditching Google Search is also a good idea because they block independent sources.
#boycottgooglesearch
Let's not only raise our voice, but take part in changing the world. Thank you for caring AND sharing.

My experience

My friend told me then that Ecosia is too bad from google that he had to return to google, though he admitted that was some time ago and was curious if it is still so.
So, I kept my attention high since seeing that video and putting my default search engine on ecosia and I compared. I am not sure it is as bad as it was then, but here it is...

  • Ecosia often doesn't put the things I am really looking for on top of the results as much as google does. They appear very low, sometimes even not on the first page of 10 results.
  • Also, they don't have certain features.. 
    • ..like translating words directly
      Google: "translate xxx from English to Portuguese"
    • ..like asking the definition of a word
      Google: "define:Rayleigh Scattering"
      ... like looking for images of certain type
      Google: "horse filetype:png"

Ecosia does, however, do a lot! Like asking for time, weather, using it as a calculator, some filters in images and offering the wikipedia as the definition for a word nonetheless (in Google it displays the definition text as a result you can see directly and you don't have to click on the link, unless you want more detail).

So, I must say, Ecosia people have done quite a bit of features in a short time! (When google has had 3 decades and gigantic financial resource due to it's somewhat monopoly!). That is really fantastic. Trust me, I'm a programmer and a DB expert. This is deep level technical and trial-and-error heavy code-lifting!
Small side-note to that is that maybe they will grow better than Google (if enough people use it so they can stay financially healthy?).

My decision

I am gonna leave my default engine on ecosia, even though it's a bit annoying sometimes. When I need google, I just paste the keywords on the Firefox search bar and click the Google search option at the bottom of the suggestions on the location bar. It's only 3 seconds work! A bit annoying, but maybe worthwhile the trees I plant. I just hope I don't get too much annoyed on the long run...

P.S. I planted 334 trees meanwhile. Wooooow!
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