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Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)
- conaclos 2y agoDoes anyone use Ecosia every day? How does it compare with DuckDuckGo and Qwant?
- rhodescolossus 2y agoThey just use Bing and Google Search https://ecosia.helpscoutdocs.com/article/579-search-results-providers https://ecosia.helpscoutdocs.com/article/579-search-results-...
- mrweasel 2y agoYes, I haven't used Qwant though. I'd say it's pretty equal to DuckDuckGo, maybe a little better after they started mixing in Google results. Generally speaking I do think that the Bing powered search engines does much better than Google, but Ecosia had a few specific searches where it's would fail me, that's gone now.
- mixedmath 2y agoI've been using it as my primary search engine for a couple of months. It's not great as a search engine. I find their locality of search to not be well-supported (e.g. the search "food near me" works good in google and not great in ecosia). Ecosia doesn't emphasize recent events, news, or posts in search results as much as I'm used to --- but I haven't decided if this is good or bad. It's not so bad that I've changed. But I do sometimes use a better search engine when I want better results.
- johnisgood 2y agoI just checked Ecosia, seems to be less censored at a very quick glance, at least in comparison to DDG and Google.
- yungporko 2y agoi have ecosia set as my default and use google or something if i really need it, but that rarely ever happens. its not the best search engine in the world or anything but it does the job perfectly fine and does some good in the world, so i'm happy to use it.
- aswerty 2y agoI really like the idea of Ecosia and Steward Owned companies, but as somebody who wants out of the Ad game completely, uses uBlock Origin religiously and pays for services like email and search. I haven't actually used Ecosia, but am interested in others experiences with it. But I imagine in the HN crowd a lot of other people fit the same profile as myself.
- dmbche 2y agoYou pay for search and email? What services do you use? May I ask you why, if you're wanting to go into it?
- dotcoma 2y agoI pay for Tuta (tuta.com) for email. The only paid search engine I know is Kagi (kagi.com)
- dwedge 2y agoI wish more people would self-host email. Email getting centralised to a handful of providers is no good for anyone.
- dwighttk 2y agoI stopped self hosting when my host got blacklisted and I lost about a year of emails with my grandmother… I just thought she was reading them but not having the energy to respond but when I visited at Christmas I saw that all my emails were in her spam box.
- loufe 2y agoThe unfortunate thing is that more than any other service, email feels like the one on which I cannot risk to compromise reliability. This sort of story (thank you for sharing) unfortunately fits with my own experience managing my University's undergraduate society's local email server. Non-stop headaches and complete indifference from every group which affects your setup.
- stakhanov 2y agoDoes anybody happen to have a pointer to further research this "Steward Owned company" legal structure? Since they're based in Germany, I assume this is a translation of a German legal term of sorts, but I couldn't find the original or anything that would let me learn more about it.
- blankton 2y agoIt sounds like a gGmbH, but the Imprint (https://www.ecosia.org/imprint https://www.ecosia.org/imprint) still says Ecosia GmbH (-> For-Profit).
- stakhanov 2y agoI looked up the bylaws just now (mostly because I'm procrastinating). It looks like they have a gGmbH that owns 99% of the shares (by number of shares), but founders retain 99% of the voting rights. Founders' shares are barred from receiving dividends, and the gGmbH has veto rights in relation to any certain changes that would fundmentally alter this ownership structure.
- nbadg 2y agoSomething I don't really understand, maybe you have thoughts: is there a benefit to gGmbH over the company being a wholly-owned subsidiary of a Stiftung?
- stakhanov 2y agoThey have a brief paragraph here [1] that indicates they considered these and decided against it: "The team considered several alternative ownership solutions to address these questions, including converting the business to a German non-profit and establishing a foundation. Both of these solutions had constraints, though, and neither offered the mixture of entrepreneurial flexibility and structure security they sought." Stiftung (Foundation) generally work well if you have a bunch of money and you basically have a fixed "algorithm" that you want to execute around the money like: "Invest it all into an index fund, and in any year in which the fund returns a profit, pay out the profits to the family members of person X in the same ratios that would apply if those people came into X's inheritance". You then appoint a bunch of lawyers to serve as the board of the foundation. Because the "algorithm" is so precisely defined, the set of circumstances where the lawyers do their job wrong will be well-defined, and will constitute a breach in their fiduciary duty. There's basically no room for making entrepreneurial decisions along the way. It's a bit like taking a pile of money, putting it on a ship, putting the ship on autopilot, and giving up any and all direct control of the ship. Depending on what precisely that "algorithm" actually is, this might get you tax advantages. Or it might create non-financial positive outcomes you might be trying to achieve like making sure that your progeny will continue to enjoy the wealth you created for many generations to come while limiting the probability that any one generation can screw it all up for the later generations. Social entrepreneurship is different from that: A social entrepreneur wants the goodwill and favourable tax treatment that comes from giving up their claim to ownership of the money generated by the business (this is what the gGmbH status does; it's a bit like 501(c)3 in the U.S.) -- But they want to retain control over the business. They want to make entrepreneurial decisions as they go, changing strategies along the way in whatever way they please, without restricting themselves too much to the execution of any predefined programme. [1] https://purpose-economy.org/en/companies/ecosia/ https://purpose-economy.org/en/companies/ecosia/
- dwedge 2y agoI'm sure Ecosia are a good company, but headlines like this always make me a little suspicious. Non profits make a lot of money for their founders without it ever being "profit". Ecosia are reporting just over 600K euros a month in wages, I'd love to see the split and what % of that goes to the CEO. You don't need to sell a business if you have plenty of income from it every month - especially if now that can't be taken away from you.
- tdb7893 2y agoHonestly even if they had super high executive pay like current tech companies do but then used the profits for good that's still like 100x better than tech companies now.
- __alexs 2y agoYes avoiding another Mozilla situation should be a high priority for anyone interested in this area in future.
- stavros 2y agoNo, but it aligns with the interests of the consumers better if you're actually targeting consumers (for the recurring revenue) rather than burning cash to get as many users as you can lock in, and then selling to someone who will milk them when they have no option.
- dwedge 2y agoThat's true, but the product can still get worse chasing revenue from those consumers.
- stavros 2y agoHm, I've seen this line of argumentation a lot, and I'd like to name it as a fallacy. It's basically "perfect is the enemy of the good", where one good action is dismissed because it's still not perfect. The product will get less bad for me when chasing revenue from me than how bad it will get for me when it's chasing revenue from someone who isn't me.
- reify 2y agoI have and still use Ecosia Daily. Its a search engine, the same as all the other search engines. Ecosia delivers a combination of search results from Yahoo!, Google, Bing and Wikipedia. Advertisements are delivered by Yahoo! and Microsoft Advertising as part of a revenue sharing agreement with the company. Ad revenue is then used to plant trees you cant complain about that
- notTooFarGone 2y agoapparently you can - see this thread.
- jasoncartwright 2y agoEcosia have been going a while, and I don't want to be that guy 'just asking questions', but... Is there some sort of independent verification of the trees being planted and their impact? I wonder if there is a study into the effect of their interesting green reinvestment setup vs a traditional for-profit businesses (Google is the obvious example) and their environmental impacts.
- modo_mario 2y agoYeah, I've got similar worries since there has been plenty of greenwashing that has happened with planting trees. I'd be sad but also not surprised if some of those trees being planted are sitka spruce wood plantations or so.
- slevis 2y agoThis is my main problem with Ecosia as well. I don't believe planting trees is really a good option to help the climate and I have zero trust in tracking progress of those projects in a lot of countries. I would much rather them e.g. investing in solar or sponsoring open source projects.
- MrToadMan 2y agoIt seems they are also diversifying their investments into other climate impact projects like solar (see some of the projects here: https://blog.ecosia.org/climate-projects/ https://blog.ecosia.org/climate-projects/).
- johnisgood 2y agoSince we are all doing it: I'd rather they support nuclear energy.
- notachatbot123 2y ago[flagged]
- 3OCSzk 2y agoAI has gotten cheaper and it will be even more in the future. This will eventually break even, comparing the cost of conventional web search vs AI on some cases. It is not the same as bitcoin where it requires more energy to get less value
- slevis 2y ago... because AI Chats are consuming more energy than search? This is a flawed argument. Internet search also started out using more energy than looking up things in your local library, so maybe we should go back to that? There is no way around increased AI usage. Would be great if Ecosia plays a key part in its adaption to balance it with environmental goals.
- goodpoint 2y ago> Shares can’t be sold at a profit or owned by people outside of the company. No profits can be taken out of the company. It it a worker-owned coop then? If so, why not calling it that?
- shafyy 2y agoNo, that alone does not make it a worker-owned coop.
- aswerty 2y agoThe model they use is relatively well known: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steward-ownership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steward-ownership My personal experience with this model boils down to: you make a company and a charity. Where the charity owns special share categories in the company. You can then have other share types for founders and investors. These share types can essentially be bought out (e.g. an investor share can be bought for 5x of it's initial value, say, allowing for investment with a 5x cap). Essentially allowing the charity to gain full shareholding at a certain point. But there is no requirement to have these other share types - but they are useful drivers to get the company off the ground. Obviously this type of investment isn't something traditional VCs care for; other more philanthropic oriented sources are required.
- jksflkjl3jk3 2y agoTheir website is confusing. So it's a non-profit for planting trees.. that's also a search engine? How are those two things at all related or have any benefit to being combined into one company?
- andy12_ 2y agoBecause ad revenue can be used for the non-profit? Ecosia's whole thing is that when you use it, you indirectly help plant trees - "the search engine that plants trees".
- jksflkjl3jk3 2y agoDo they disclose what percentage of their revenue is donated? If it's just a token amount, then I'd rather not support a marketing gimmick and would prefer to just donate directly to an organization focused on trees. If it's a significant amount, then it seems unlikely that they'll be able to compete with for-profit alternatives that can focus on developing the best product.
- MrToadMan 2y agoYou can explore the amount paid out to projects by month, region and partner projects in those regions here: https://blog.ecosia.org/ecosia-financial-reports-tree-planting-receipts/ https://blog.ecosia.org/ecosia-financial-reports-tree-planti...
- scarfaceneo 2y agoYou can donate to an organisation and use their search engine.
- Gerardo1 2y agoBut are you donating to an organization to plant trees? What has the lower barrier of entry: making a point to donate your money, or switching your default search engine?
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- mapt 2y agoWe have legal structures with which to make statements like this about nonprofit status, structures which bind the promise so that we don't have to take your word on it.
- guhwhut 2y agoThey've used those, this is a blog post for humans who care more about the intent from the ceo rather than the specific legal frameworks.
- hoseja 2y agoTrees don't need planting. Trees need a safe place to grow without saplings getting destroyed. But trees absolutely don't need planting. Besides, a healthy forest has to go through pioneering stages first.
- guhwhut 2y agoAs a forest land owner, trees absolutely need planting. Then they need to be protected from humans and deer and invasive species and disease. Many trees fail to grow. Most people would be astounded at how many trees don't make it.
- globular-toast 2y agoNot surprising really given how many seeds a single tree produces every year. Must be in the thousands.
- jgraham 2y agoI think there is a lot of truth in this, but presented in a way that misses some nuance. It's true that if your goal is to regenerate native forest, which it generally[+] should be where that's an option, then it's indeed true that you want to allow existing forest to regenerate as naturally as possible. The problem in these cases is either land use (land is used for forestry / agriculture / etc. so there's nowhere for new trees to grow) or over-grazing (either by livestock such as sheep or by high populations of wild herbivores such as deer). In those cases you need to solve the underlying problems rather than just counting the number of saplings in the ground (in a heavily browsed area planting may have the advantage that you tend to put in tree guards. Ideally one could instead install appropriate fencing around the entire area to reduce herbivore numbers below the problematic levels). However you aren't always in that scenario. For example if you're in a landscape with few seed sources then natural regeneration might take an implausibly long time. An extreme example of that would be "regreen the desert" type projects where you need to bootstrap the conditions for tree growth by putting in a lot of trees in a short space of time, although those have a high failure rate. You might also be worried that natural regeneration is too slow in the face of changing climatic conditions, and want to plant trees right for the anticipated climate 100 years hence (although that itself is likely to be controversial). And of course frequently in the real world tree-planting projects have goals totally unrelated to climate change e.g. just forestry, and as such one shouldn't expect those things to be especially good for the climate, or at all good for biodiversity. Anyway, I like the idea of companies dedicating part of their revenue to tackling severe global problems like climate change. But I tend to agree that Ecosia's continued focus on tree planting as their headline activity makes them look a bit naive to the audience that is likely to be most receptive to changing products specifically for environmental reasons. Hopefully some of the other project types they're moving into look better in the details than just tree planting. [+] But not always of course. Converting peat bog to woodland, for example, is going to reduce its effectiveness as a carbon store, and likely reduce biodiversity as well.
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- lxgr 2y ago> [...] my two promises by turning Ecosia into a so-called “steward-owned company”. This model imposes two legally binding and irreversible restrictions on us: I really hope that we'll get a legal precedent for this actually being possible and durable in at least some countries, because that was the promise of OpenAI at some point as well. (That's not to say I have reason to suspect anything bad of the current or any potential future stewards of Ecosia, but I'll prefer a hard legal guarantee over a promise any time, especially when charitable donations are involved.)
- mminer237 2y agoOpenAI is legally bound to its non-profit goals, but the problem is that any law requires enforcement. If OpenAI acts against that public interest, is the Delaware attorney general really going to know and be able to prosecute the case? I think what's arguably more important than theoretical legal rights is actually having stewards that care about the public benefit rather than leaving someone who would really love to funnel everything to his pocketbook if he could in charge and trusting him to respect the law.
- lxgr 2y agoDefinitely; by "hard legal guarantee" I mean the entire thing, i.e. both a law and it being enforced/upheld. (Conversely, it doesn't even need to necessarily be a law, but I'm afraid a strong social norm is even further out of reach at the moment.)
- DannyBee 2y ago"I really hope that we'll get a legal precedent for this actually being possible and durable in at least some countries, because that was the promise of OpenAI at some point as well." Lawyer here - it is basically impossible to do what they (and others) want. There are few (if any?) countries, where either provision would survive bankruptcy, for example. They could always choose to dissolve rather than restructure, but if they did choose to restructure, i'm not aware of a country where the restrictions here would be enforced on the successor. On top of this, in most (all?) countries, agreements not to file for bankruptcy are not enforceable ;) So that's one mechanism. In most countries, however, these provisions would be "easily" removable through shareholder + officer vote. Some companies go pretty far down the path of trying to use trusts as shareholders and requirements on trustees and such to try to ensure such a thing never occurs. You can also do hilarious (to me) things like create enough shareholders (let's say 7 billion), make shares non-transferrable, etc, so that even though theoretically it requires a vote, such a vote is practically impossible. I also had a friend who explored whether you could legally require the place of voting to be like "the surface of the sun" or something that ensures voting can't occur, but unfortunately, you usually can't. Companies really aren't meant for this kind of thing - not that there is something better, but what tehy are trying to do is pretty fundamentally opposed to how countries want companies to operate. If it's really a big enough deal, the "correct" answer is to create a new corporate form, much like we created LLC's, etc (LLC's are less than 100 years old, so it's not impossible)
- deadbabe 2y agoBut what if there was a way to make a profit planting trees? Wouldn’t this accelerate the rate of trees?
- roughly 2y agoThere’s a thing we tend to do as engineers where we hear a thing and then start thinking through the implications and design, which is normal, but also we seem to assume we’re the only ones who’ve ever thought about it, and therefore our concerns must be unaddressed, and we’re brilliant, so clearly nobody’s ever thought of them before, so we’ve gotta share them. If you’d like to see this behavior in action, this is the thread for you.
- Blackthorn 2y agoThat sort of arrogance is absolutely out of control in the tech industry and it's bizarre because I've never seen it at the remotely same level anywhere else.
- roughly 2y agoIt’s also why our cars keep running people over and our websites keep overturning democracies
- yifanl 2y agoThe proliferation of Hanlon's Razor has been one of the most damaging things to society. People as a whole are not incompetent, every individual (and every grouping of individuals) have goals and will take appropriate actions to achieve them with intent, but somehow a neologism has tricked people into believing this is the exception and not the norm.
- tehjoker 2y agoIt's because most of the time people see mostly powerless people trying to do their jobs and messing up. They don't have as much of a frame of reference for how powerful people act, especially because there is so much mystification in the media (literally owned by the said powerful people). The rule you apply to your friends and co-workers isn't suitable for the maniacal supervillians running society. Of course, those guys also fuck up in bizzare and stupid ways too, so people will point that out and be like look, they're just bad at their evil jobs!
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- 1vuio0pswjnm7 2y agoRather than make promises of dubious enforceability, why not just share the index as a public resource.
- nobodywasishere 2y agoWhat index? Their results are sourced from Google and Bing
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 2y agohttps://blog.ecosia.org/eusp/ https://blog.ecosia.org/eusp/
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 2y agoThe index: https://blog.ecosia.org/eusp/ https://blog.ecosia.org/eusp/
- perrygeo 2y agoGiven how bad Google search has gotten recently, I'd give this a try even without the trees. If they can provide a decent search experience _and_ reduce CO2, even better.
- culi 2y agoEcosia also recently announced a partnership with Qwant to build their own search engine index! This is great for the open web and I'm very excited to see where Ecosia goes next
- ponow 2y agoUnless you bound compensation, a proclamation of "non-profit" rings hollow.
- imgabe 2y agoI mean, cool, and ok, but it is kind of ridiculous to consider taking profits from your company "unethical". And you're taking them anyway in the form of planting trees. You could have just had a normal company and taken all the profit you wanted and used it to plant trees and done the same thing. I guess this is somehow more tax-efficient, but it’s not really any different in principle.
- etothepii 2y agoThe difference is that the users buying the product (eye balls on search) value it differently. This means you can get your first 1m users without needing to be as much better (maybe you can even be worse) than Google as you would otherwise need to be. It's a very interesting problem. When starting a company the biggest problem is often getting the first few users. One option is to build something people want - another is to build something your friends want - but another option is to build something the media wants to talk about.
- imgabe 2y agoAccording to Wikipedia, ecosia launched in 2009 and this is from 2018, so they must have already had traction by then.
- Williams565 2y ago[dead]
- Williams565 2y ago[dead]