Have you heard about Ecosia, the new search engine that has just been launched? It’s powered by Bing and Yahoo search technology, but what makes this search engine special is that it’s environmentally friendly! 80% of its revenue goes to the World Wildlife Fund to protect rainforests and fight global warming. That means, that by using this search engine, Internet surfers can save 2000 square meters of rainforest per year!

Ecosia has been developed by a group of friends in Berlin, Germany, who are concerned about the environment. They set up this search engine to try and do something to save it.  I think this is a wonderful idea and a great cause. Hopefully Ecosia search engine will become as popular as the ‘big three’ some day.

To confirm Ecosia’s ’green’ status, its data centres are run on electricity from alternative sources that do not emit carbon dioxide. In addition, it has been launched in time for the Copenhagen climate change conference (7-18 Dec 2009), which may give it some more exposure.

Each search in Ecosia will protect about 2sqm of rainforest, so by using this search engine, we can protect the environment one search at a time. Everyone who surfs the Web will use search engines at some point, so why not use Ecosia and save the world 🙂 At least this little part is not difficult.

Ecosia has one other advantage besides giving profits to environment protection: It protects users’ privacy by deleting all user-related data within 48 hours. It does not analyze your searches and it does not sell personal information.

So what are you waiting for? Try Ecosia!