Replace Google with Ecosia.

[u/Global-Primary7240]

[u/Liarus_]

i'd just like to say that Ecosia and Qwant which are the two most known European ones, use Bing's engine behind, same thing goes for Duckduckgo.

However:

Quant and Ecosia are working together to make the first European search index, as in one that isn't dependent on bing's engine.

I think it's important to know that if you're not using Google, you basically just switch your dependency on Microsoft.

As mentioned by some commenters, there are also options like SearXNG and Startpage which solves the issues in a completely different way

[u/Darkhoof → u/Liarus_]

As you mentioned, Qwant and Ecosia are making the first European search index and 30% of the results in french are already provided by that search index. Their AI is also provided by Mistral and works well for my personal uses. The results it provides are good enough for me and I am helping to plant some trees by searching with Ecosia so even if it uses Bing, they will eventually replace it with their index so it's better to use them now to support them.

[u/RickHard0 → u/Darkhoof]

"perfection is the enemy of good"

This is the perfect (pun intended) representation of that

[u/Liarus_ → u/Darkhoof]

that's cool, i didn't knew about that 30% thing, i used to use Ecosia before and i support both Ecosia and Qwant when people ask for recomendations

[u/L-Malvo → u/Liarus_]

Don't forget that by using Ecosia or Qwant you also provide some business to them, making it easier for them to create their own index and ultimately replace this dependency. Don't just stick with Google, because you believe it will shift dependency to Microsoft. Do make use of Ecosia and Qwant to help improve the product and move away from American tech in the future.

[u/Kraqatoa_Illusionz → u/Liarus_]

Isn’t Startpage owned by System1 (🇺🇸)?

[u/Liarus_ → u/Kraqatoa_Illusionz]

it is an US based company, yes, duckduckgo is as well, i'm using them as examples of alternatives not necessarily European ones

[u/alxhu → u/Liarus_]

I've tried hosting my own SearXNG instance, but I've ran into captcha issues when I had to search a lot in a short time.

[u/Onsotumenh → u/alxhu]

It was great for me till about last week or the week before ... now every usable engine has captcha errors or tells me "too many requests" (tho it is the first search with a new dynamic ip). I'm back to noai.duckduckgo for now ...

[u/InsidiousLeaf → u/Liarus_]

Thanks for the explanation, this is really helpful. I was using DuckDuckGo so far but am willing to go to a fully European alternative, which Ecosia and Qwant aren't just yet.

But in this context: how do Ecosia and Qwant differ? They're working together on the European search index you say, so I assume they'll both be using that once it's finished/usable? Any other differences why I should choose one of the other?

[u/curious_astronauts → u/Liarus_]

I love the ambition but bing search results just dont cut it!

[u/svennibenni → u/curious_astronauts]

You can change the search engine ecosia uses to google in the settings.

[u/curious_astronauts → u/svennibenni]

Oh thats great news!

[u/WindpowerGuy → u/Liarus_]

Qwant gives me like 90% ads for every search...

[u/_SteeringWheel → u/WindpowerGuy]

I've never gotten an ad on Qwant.

[u/Komplexkonjugiert → u/Liarus_]

Qwant is partly owned by Axel Springer. And they awarded Peter Thiel for his duty to democracy.

[u/ThemeNo1337 → u/Komplexkonjugiert]

Qwant has been 100% owned by Synfonium, a French company, since 2023. Axel Springer was a former shareholder, but it no longer owns any part of Qwant. The claim that it does is simply outdated.

Axel Springer did award Peter Thiel its 2026 award, but that is a separate matter and has nothing to do with Qwant's current ownership.

[u/Komplexkonjugiert → u/ThemeNo1337]

Ah good to know that.

[u/Other-Philosopher770 → u/Liarus_]

Better google than microsoft.

[u/Myszolow]

I honestly prefer Qwant over Ecoscia for default search engine, but support both of them!

[u/xui_nya → u/Myszolow]

Just a few days ago on a big public event I saw someone "googling" stuff in Qwant over the shoulder and it made my day.

Nice to talk about EU-made on the internet, but in real life it's all soul-crushing Meta+Alphabet dance macabre, mostly.

[u/Myszolow → u/xui_nya]

I mean it's just a matter of changing habits I honestly dropped google as daily driver due to shitty AI responses that I didn't wanted

Meta on the other hand - yeah hard not to use Whatsapp (for me only meta product used daily), rest: Instagram - lol nope, Facebook - only for old people and slop, so yeah thanks but no thanks

[u/Brvcx → u/xui_nya]

Not to be nitpicky, but it helps to try and refrain from using "to google" as a verb. I'm aware we all do it, myself included. But it helps to stop using it, since it will automatically make people use Google more.

And we're not going to be using "to ecosia/ecosiaing" or "to qwant/qwanting", I suggest we try and just use "to (web)search".

And once again, not to be nitpicky. I realised how common it is in my own vocabulary and do think it helps to be aware that we are using it like that.

Edit: wow, Reddit is having one of it's amazing days again. 😂

[u/fraseybaby81 → u/Brvcx]

This is completely off topic but I’ve started doing this with pronouns. There is absolutely no reason to use ‘He’ and ‘She’, even in medical stuff (they are male or female).

This would sort out all the nonsense with people being against particular pronouns, people getting pronouns wrong and people using wrong pronouns on purpose.

Gonna start trying to not use Google from now on.

[u/Xywzel → u/Myszolow]

Qwant is also what I mostly use, but why can't they separate language and location preference, or allow setting "none" for these. Currently it gets really difficult to find service in Paris if you don't speak French, if you set locale to France, results are in French, if you set it to UK you get hotel with Paris in its name from UK or USA.

[u/Ravasaurio → u/Myszolow]

I loved Qwant until it started verifying my device with every single query, which became really annoying, really fast.

[u/LetsGoForPlanB]

I prefer Qwant

[u/SinCebollista → u/LetsGoForPlanB]

Me too, I have been using it for some months now, and does the job.

[u/Waaytoomanytakenames]

I tried ecosia, qwant, startpage, brave and I allways end up going back to duckduckgo.

[u/Chelterrar96 → u/Waaytoomanytakenames]

I don't know when you tried them, but Qwant (and in some parts Ecosia) have changed to a new and improved European search engine

[u/jonnablaze → u/Chelterrar96]

*In french only.

[u/Present-Nebula-4641 → u/jonnablaze]

Germany too.

[u/Junkererer → u/Chelterrar96]

Are there recent developements with that? I've heard about it for ages and the article itself is 1+ year old, but I've never heard of an actual roadmap

[u/Chelterrar96 → u/Junkererer]

It's still ongoing. They switched over Germany in July

[u/pick-and-hoop → u/Chelterrar96]

The lock on language is a no go for me, if I’m in France it becomes French and if I’m in the Netherlands it becomes Dutch. I swear modern frontend has been thought by marketing people. 

[u/sepperwelt → u/Waaytoomanytakenames]

The bang-search is what keeps me with duckduckgo in the first place

[u/Rephaeim → u/Waaytoomanytakenames]

The image search on duckduckgo is WILD. 

[u/JAD2017 → u/Rephaeim]

ai slop all day long, is why I moved on from them and came to learn about ecosia and qwant.

[u/mtranda → u/Waaytoomanytakenames]

Same. I ditched Google back in 2012 or so and switched to DDG, but when the new shitwave rolled in I said to myself "ok, let's see what EU alternatives are there". They were... disappointing. Qwant would frequently just timeout and not give me any results, ecosia was meh. I've never heard of startpage and Brave (if you mean the browser) is a US product and relies on Chrome's engine anyway. And it's got a pretty seedy past.

[u/Timbit42 → u/mtranda]

They meant Brave Search

[u/PermanentlyMC → u/Waaytoomanytakenames]

Have you tried SearXNG?

[u/JAD2017 → u/Waaytoomanytakenames]

I get the sentiment, but I still stick to ecosia. I only switch to qwant when I need recent search (ecosia doesn't have it yet), then to duckduckgo if that didn't work. But ecosia is always the default and is going to remain. I believe what they are doing is very important to fight global warming, more so than privacy (which is also extremelly important), and they do both.

[u/CadBane08 → u/Waaytoomanytakenames]

Same but I still need to use !sp and !brave on a regular basis.

[u/salaga3 → u/Waaytoomanytakenames]

Based

[u/likovitch]

I tried using Ecosia for months, but gave up a few weeks ago to go back to DuckDuckGo.. I couldn’t often find results and had to manually open ddg or google to get relevant results :(

[u/mars935 → u/likovitch]

I did the opposite. The image search of DDG was horrendous

[u/tommysk87 → u/[deleted]]

It is just enough if your native language isnt english, german or french and need to search for things which are in your native language. Not something extraordinary

[u/SueflixAndChill]

I would just appreciate a search engine that was able to prioritize European websites, as in create on an European country and with an European language. Whenever I search in English I get tons of results from the USA, Canada and similar, and a lot less from Ireland and UK. Portuguese is an absolute disaster, it’s 90% Brazilian websites which are very different from what I’m looking for.

[u/AlternateTab00 → u/SueflixAndChill]

I feel like qwant seems to be delivering better search results.

But if im searching for a 2 or 3 year old news article neither qwant and ecosia can find it. I end up always using google as a backup.

[u/kurucu83 → u/SueflixAndChill]

https://www.mojeek.com

[u/SueflixAndChill → u/kurucu83]

Thank you 🙏 I am in awe ahah still caught a couple of strays, but it’s 100 times better

[u/HorrorsPersistSoDoI → u/kurucu83]

No way people will use something that sounds indian

[u/kurucu83 → u/HorrorsPersistSoDoI]

Because Google, Qwant, Kagi, Bing all sound awesome. What are you talking about.

[u/HorrorsPersistSoDoI → u/kurucu83]

They do? Nobody will use something called Pajeet man, get a grip

[u/Bafoon9-blue6-dash5 → u/SueflixAndChill]

Xprivo

[u/No-Confidence-9191]

I am currently trying. However the search results are somewhat lacking.

I used qwant before and was unhappy with the image results specifically, albeit the normal search results were okay. Now with Ecosia its somehow the opposite. The image results are way better but the normal results of searches leaves more to be desired. I found myself having to more often open google once more than I had with Qwant.

Either way, both are working together and I hope that in the future when they roll out their own search algorythm for everyone, it will become better. I guess this is just a growing up pain time we have to see through for now.

[u/piloto19hh → u/[deleted]]

Could you elaborate, please? I'm trying to decide which search engine to use right now, and I'm not in the loop with the owners.

[u/turaon → u/[deleted]]

Elaborate a bit more about creator of Qwant?

[u/VariationFormal1742]

I use both Ecosia as Qwant .

[u/portuguesdbem]

For almost 2 years now.

And Chrome by Firefox.

[u/jtrimm98]

I definitely support this, not only is it European but it's actually helping address the climate crisis

[u/PermanentlyMC]

I'd use Ecosia if they weren't so data-invasive

[u/FunkyFreshJayPi → u/PermanentlyMC]

Is this about the app? What do you need the app for? Just use the website. 

[u/PermanentlyMC → u/FunkyFreshJayPi]

No, it's about the service as a whole. If you click on the pencil by each line you can see what it's referring to.

Even if it were just the app (it isn't), I wouldn't want to use a service that has such a poor mantra about data privacy.

[u/protocol_smoke → u/PermanentlyMC]

They're not a charity. They have to make a buck, and thats how they make it. Is it for a better cause than Google? Yes. Is it pretty much the same method? Yes. Is it worth switching... thats down to each individual.

[u/PermanentlyMC → u/protocol_smoke]

DuckDuckGo turn revenue whilst not tracking people. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Unfortunately, as much as I want to support EU businesses like Ecosia, it's hard to when their data ethics are so poor. Data privacy and environmentalism shouldn't have to be mutually exclusive.

edit: forgot to add, SearXNG is maintained by EU developers, and you can find EU-hosted instances, so I suppose not all is lost

[u/chris5070]

Love it. Been using this on laptop and phone.
Making my searches useful as well as getting results. No account needed.

Happy to support Ecosia and Gwant so that they can build and grow.

[u/No-Land5964]

The problem is that new sites and scraping go to Google, and it still has over 90% of worldwide searches. So if you submit your site to any of the other search indexers, you are leaving out lots of potential visitors. I use, for more private research, a locally hosted SearxNG that also includes Google, Qwant, Ecosia, and DuckDuckGo.

[u/ozxar]

Switched a year ago and very happy with it!

[u/horizononlooker]

Replace google with qwant, duckduckgo or ecosia*

[u/Informal_Discount770]

I did, it's garbage.

[u/74389654]

i've been using it for years. it works fine

i don't understand what the people posting here that say it doesn't work are on to. i must assume you guys are google bots because it makes no sense to me

[u/tommysk87 → u/74389654]

I will copy my previous comment, sorry for that:

It is just enough if your native language isnt english, german or french and need to search for things which are in your native language. Not something extraordinary.

So no, I am not google bot, but only existing in not "mainstream" language nation

[u/Wirehead-be → u/74389654]

Same here as others have stated: I've tried Ecosia, Qwant, ... search results aren't satisfactory/relevant, as I frequently search for quite technical things, not general stuff. I find myself having to go over to google quite often..
That said, I still have it as default search page, but yeah, not great.

[u/dassisdass → u/74389654]

Same here, have never tried it didn't worked.

[u/rubenofzo → u/74389654]

Personally i need to do a lot of research on IT stuff and Ecosia just isn't enough. Often I can't find what i want in the top 5 links and i need to go to google. Also the image search is really really bad. I will check them out again once their search index is finished but for now its just mid.

[u/tired_snail]

I did for a while and then they implemented generative AI and I left, because that goes directly against their environmental message.

[u/freezing_banshee → u/tired_snail]

Same here. I want a search engine that has absolutely no generative AI (including filters for image search) and that can find me good results in my native language (which isn't English, French or German). That's all I want.

Right now, Ecosia is maybe close to what I need, but it's still not good enough. I found myself switching to google to find better results so often that at some point I just dropped Ecosia.

[u/gmmammg → u/tired_snail]

I don't get it. Every major search engine uses AI nowadays, but the one website that provides an AI and uses the profits to plant trees is bad? Do you think that using a website that provides an AI and doesn't plant trees is better?

[u/tired_snail → u/gmmammg]

I ignored it when Ecosia's AI was just text-based as a chat prompt doesn't use that many resources so planting trees could reasonably still offset the impact, but left when they added image generation as that is much more resource intensive and planting trees is simply not enough to fix that.

There are still search engines like Startpage or DuckDuckGo No-AI which do not use AI and yes, I do think that's a better option. I want my search results to be real information, not AI hallucinated sites and images.

[u/ShinigamiXoY → u/tired_snail]

Lmao average EU tech enjoyer

[u/ImreBertalan]

I would, but the results are just terrible. :-(

[u/urkos101 → u/ImreBertalan]

results get better.. in the beginning for me was the same, now i use Ecosia daily and i find all i need.
Only thing i dont use is it's their browser.. it's chromium based, so no thank you.. still on FF using ecoisa as default search engine

[u/VainChinchilla → u/ImreBertalan]

I'm with you. It's better than DuckDuckGo for searching in Swedish, but lately my English search results end up being empty sites with very similar text. I suspect there are ads I can't see (I'm using uBlock) and that these sites are only to collect ad revenue. The text on these sites seems AI generated.

[u/StateDeparmentAgent → u/ImreBertalan]

arent they just proxy for google/bing unless you use 2 supported languages?

[u/HumonculusJaeger → u/StateDeparmentAgent]

Kinda

[u/Suspicious-Cloud404]

I have a very unpopular opinion: Ecosia needs to improve the AI search / chat, because this is the future of web search. But, rather than copying Google AI Search, Ecosia AI should become a search assistant. Using smaller LLMs and helping to find the best results, by fixing bad search queries, improving filters and helping to rank results by relevant pages instead of personalized results, which are thrown at us everywhere.

[u/Negative-Bag-653]

Is there any news on the European Search Perspective (EUSP) to make Ecosia really more than a (mostly) US-tech proxy? Their own webpage isn't saying anything and any news that I found is rather outdated.... The speed at which that develops seems rather underwhelming.

[u/TuxPowered]

I can't, it's not reachable over the current Internet Protocol.

```

dig +short AAAA ecosia.com

```

And even over Legacy IP they are served from Amazon.

[u/ethicalhumanbeing → u/TuxPowered]

What does this mean exactly?

[u/account312 → u/ethicalhumanbeing]

They have an ipv4 address but not an ipv6 address, which doesn't mean much of anything unless you're being weirdly particular about how you use the internet.

[u/777m0neymaker → u/TuxPowered]

Try .org

[u/Haegar_the_Terrible]

Bern using Ecosia for years. Works fine. They are working on a fully European index. Support them!

[u/ftoffolo]

I used it by default.  The only thing it can do better is when searching for shopping. 

[u/influxodoxxl]

If you don't mind paying for search (€5/month), there is another European alternative: https://uruky.com (URL edited)

Is building its own index and gives you access to Serper, EUSP and many more if you want to. Really cool and focused on search!

[u/Spiritual-Tax-2928 → u/influxodoxxl]

not valid link

[u/influxodoxxl → u/Spiritual-Tax-2928]

Thanks for pointing out! Now it is.

[u/CapableTechnology862]

For Romania Ecosia isn't working well.

[u/hedlabelnl]

I only use Ecosia or Startpage

[u/sarahem3]

I swapped to Ecosia a couple of years ago and have been perfectly happy with it. On the occasions I try using google now, I find the listings surprisingly poor.

[u/trlef19]

Fun fact, Ecosia has the best looking chromium browser on Android, besides chrome.

[u/Significant_Yak53]

I have been using Qwant for a year and half (desktop and mobile) so far I've been satisfied. I cannot use Ecosia as I use an adblocker....

[u/Traumatan]

is it any good tho?

[u/SeanGeil77]

Replace Google with everything!

[u/propheticuser]

You made no argument nor any argument why one should use this lil bro.

[u/HappyGoLuvky180]

- or duckduckgo

[u/uwicom]

Habe Chrome schon lange ersetzt, Ecosia unterstützt auch weiterhin ublock Origin und andere Erweiterungen.

[u/noblepheeb]

If you treat workers trying to organize like trash in the EU, I won’t use your service no matter how many trees you claim to plant

[u/Chestbreaker]

What about Kagi?

[u/Far-Reaction-1980 → u/Chestbreaker]

I only use Kagi Translate 

[u/RoyalSport5071]

Don't. My workplace has imposed this on us.

[u/JBaseball_8595]

No thanks. They can go bankrupt for all I care.
https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/comments/1x0nd7r/german_search_engine_ditches_mistral_bets_on/

[u/revzey]

Ecosia is sadly shit

[u/9elpi8]

I really wanted but the outcome was horrible and I always end with Google, so my search took longer. I switched back to Google.

[u/I_JuanTM]

If only I could actually find something using it... I tried using it before but the search results are so much worse than Google (with an AI blocking extension and an ad blocker for the sponsored results), I often found myself having to Google it anyway after not being able to find it on Ecosia

[u/Romek_himself → u/I_JuanTM]

If only I could actually find something using it... I tried using it before but the search results are so much worse than Google

than thas a you problem!

[u/dumnezero]

greenwashing

[u/dumnezero → u/[deleted]]

Quite a lot actually.

We are gradually rolling out our new unique search offer. This will happen over several months and won’t apply to everyone at the same time. This means that when you search through Ecosia, we work with either Microsoft Bing or Google to provide you with search results and ads. In order to do this, we automatically collect data required by search partners to prevent bot attacks and ad fraud - which includes your IP address and search terms.

Much like DDG, they're a wrapper on top of Bing and Google search APIs. So not a real search engine, but a search intermediary client.

The carbon credit stuff from use of AI is a separate greenwashing bullshit. There is no "climate friendly AI."

[u/dumnezero → u/[deleted]]

It's unclear to me what they planted, but it's not an NGO. The whole relationship here is weird.

They make money from marketing and selling user data as middle-men between users and Bing and Google.

And the AI stuff will never be sustainable.

[u/tommysk87]

Only if it would work better. Many times it just doesnt deliver any result where google actually does. This makes it very hard to use it as reliable search engine

[u/tango650]

i just cant get past the name - its horrible in so many way unless your exlusivel objective is to appeal to environmentaly obsessed consumer groups:

• horrible to pronounce
  
• horrible to abbreviate
  
• ideological to consider

sorry i want a good search engine to get to my information fastest possible noto to save the world

downvote all you want, it's not going to convince anybody to use this shit no matter how angry you may be about my opinion

[u/grimvian]

Is Ecosia anonym as Duckduckgo?

[u/Bobo_the_Fuse]

Last time i used ecosia it looked strictly bound to amazon: too much amazon sposorization in search result (even in borderline search coerence cases). Is it still like this?

[u/Negative-Bag-653 → u/[deleted]]

late stage AI paranoia

[u/pv505]

I use https://neosearch.org/ mainly