Today — on Earth Day — the nonprofit search engine Ecosia launched «the greenest browser on Earth». It aims to offer customers a more sustainable alternative to Google Chrome or Apple Safari.
Just like Ecosia’s search engine, the more you use the browser, the more trees you will help plant. The company claims to have planted 200 million trees since 2009.
The new browser will be powered by renewable energy from Ecosia’s own solar power plants. The company even says that the browser will actually generate — 25 Watt-hours of green energy per user every day when they browse the web. That’s enough to run a light bulb for 3 hours. This may not seem like much, but if you multiply it by Ecosia’s 20 million existing search engine customers, the result is even more significant.
According to the developers, the Ecosia browser is optimized for speed. It is claimed that pages load 3 times faster than in most major browsers. This is due to a built-in ad blocker that reduces user data and energy consumption.
The browser is based on the Chromium platform and will be familiar to anyone who already uses Chrome. This includes browsing settings and security features such as password management and SSL encryption. At the same time, users will have access to Ecosia’s existing features, such as the green leaf icon, climate commitment rating, and the recently launched AI Chat powered by OpenAI. The chatbot generates «greener answers», guiding users to greener solutions.
It should be noted that Ecosia’s browser includes a «sponsored links» feature. As a result, users can shop online while supporting Ecosia’s climate change projects at no additional cost. This will create a new revenue stream for the company, which previously made all its money from advertising revenue. Ecosia claims that all of its profits go directly to tree planting projects around the world. And now, with a new browser, on to clean energy production.
The Ecosia browser is available for Mac and Windows computers via the download page, and for mobile devices via the Android and iOS app stores.
Source: thenextweb