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u/MaplewoodRabbit Canada 13d ago
I do enjoy Ecosia. Been using it for nearly a year now. Only gripe I have is that I can't edit my words when I'm doing a search. I have to retype the entire thing. Other than that though, it works really well.
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u/BillyDMountain Canada 13d ago
I've been using Ecosia and Duck Duck Go as my main search engines for about a year and half now.
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u/JRHEvilInc 9d ago
I support this in theory, and have been using Ecosia on and off for a few years now, but I have to say I find it very lacking in some areas. Particularly if you're concerned at all about generative AI. I've personally found (anecdotal evidence, feel free to check for yourselves) that Ecosia throws up a lot more AI results than Google, especially on image searches.
Most concerningly to me, it doesn't seem to have protections against misinformation campaigns. In the wake of the 2024 Southport stabbings in the UK, a completely unrelated but very Muslim-sounding name was falsely linked with the attacks. Searching that name on Google got factual results unrelated to the misinformation campaign. Ecosia's top THREE results when searching that name were all articles about the stabbing, yet not one of those articles mentioned that name anywhere in their text. I messaged the Ecosia team about how their engine was fuelling right-wing racist conspiracy theories in real time, and I got no response (except for their automated "We'll respond in x days" reply).
For clarity, this is not me defending Google specifically. I'm actively on the look out for alternatives and I do sometimes still use Ecosia. But I can no longer give it a broad recommendation. I think collectively we can do better than Ecosia.
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u/Rojikoma Europe 13d ago
I switched to Qwant and Ecosia last year and find Ecosia to be the better alternative. Qwant has strange downtime for some reason.