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Comment by palata | Hacker News Reader

I used Kagi for a few years and was completely satisfied.

I switched to Ecosia because I want to support European alternatives, but that's all. I tried Qwant for a while, and for some reason it was frustrating me (I assume that the results were not satisfying for me?). I wonder if Qwant is better for search in French? Not sure. Ecosia hasn't been frustrating though, and I cannot say that it's worse than my experience with Kagi. I just wish I could pay Ecosia instead of having ads (which my browser seems to block anyway).

Anyway, I always wonder why it is that a search engine (say Kagi, Ecosia) can "work well" and another one (in my case Qwant) can be "frustrating". If they all tap into Google/Bing and others, I would expect similar quality? I'd be curious if someone could explain!

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Ecosia uses Google's index by default. Qwant = Bing's. (at least for now). DDG also uses Bing's.

Kagi uses a lot of different providers, including [Yandex](https://kagifeedback.org/d/5445-reconsider-yandex-integratio...).

I would recommend trying out [Uruky](https://uruky.com/) You can choose your own indexes to use. So if you want to support European companies you can try to use as much as possible European or open-source indexes and only when you can't find stuff to back to google's (they even have a private google index that they use called Serper). You can also configure fallback search engines like DDG, Brave...

Thanks for the heads up on the Euro-alt. Worth a try. Hadn't heard of Ecosia

Ecosia is just greenwashing, "we'll plant some trees for you if you use us so you can feel good about yourself". Just like the 5€ "carbon offset" you can pay for your flight. And search is powered by bing so you're not really sponsoring anything in the EU other than just lining some smart marketers' pockets.

I agree that some of the companies do that green offsetting that doesn't achieve anything.

But it seems Ecosia does really help around the world, at least looking at their reports certainly seems so. Even if it's not a huge impact, isn't it better than nothing? How does NOT using it help anyone?

It doesn't help because it gives people a feeling that they're already doing something big. That way they deprioritise the environment in their head and do less things that actually matter.

Instead, just refusing an unnecessary work trip or something once a year helps a lot more than using ecosia.

There's a problem with "feelgood as a service" when the problem is so big it needs drastic measures. It gives people the impression that there is a quick fix. Whoop, I just changed my default browser, great, I've done something to solve climate change! But still eating 300g of meat every day, meh.

That's what I object with with ecosia. They talk of "saving the planet" on their website. But on a global scale it basically does nothing.

Not true. 1. They actually do the things they claim, check their transparency reports. 2. They use Google / Bing. That's true. But they partnered with Qwant and launched an European index (EUSP), and it's pretty good. They're starting to roll it out, but you can use the index yourself via API.

Still better than using Google directly.

They do plant some trees but it's really quite minimal. Just the idea that watching some ads in a search engine can fix the world, that's the problem I'm having an issue with. That's exactly what greenwashing is.

> Just the idea that watching some ads in a search engine can fix the world, that's the problem I'm having an issue with.

I agree with you, it won't change the world. But again I think it's mainly just marketing. They do what they claim and they do seem to care about actually making a difference and are somewhat consistent with their efforts so I wouldn't call that "greenwashing". I don't think their efforts are minimal but what do I know about planting trees and stuff. You can check their youtube channel :

https://www.youtube.com/@Ecosia/videos

> Ecosia is just greenwashing

I genuinely don't care about their "green marketing". I use Ecosia because it is European, and it works for me as a search engine. As I said I tried Qwant but for some reason it was not working for me.

I do care a lot about ecology, but my choice of search engine is not really impacted by that. People who think that "planting trees" is helping the environment need to get informed about the problem.

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