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#2
08-14-2010, 07:10 PM
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You're taking my meaning the wrong way.
I didn't mean "scam" as something that cons people out of money, but rather as a way for the owner to make more money off the revenue he gets from the advertisements. We don't give him money, but using ecosia might. How do we know ecosia is really giving 80% of its ad revenue to "a rainforest protection program run by the WWF"? Think about it. I did a little digging and found out a lot about Christian Kroll, the guy who founded Ecosia... and Forestle. And Znout. And many other "eco-friendly" search engines (Ecosia isn't the first of his). For one, Forestle was banned by Google for fraud. Another weird thing about Ecosia is the fact that the program claims to be "the greenest search engine on the net", when Forestle (which is still up and running) claims to give 90%, as compared to Ecosia's 80%. Do I sense a rat? All three basic sites: Ecosia, Forestle, and Znout all have almost identical website layouts, the only major differences being the logo pictures. Go check them out for yourself. Through more digging, I found that Ecosia's CTR (the percentage rate of ad clicks) is 2%. Interestingly enough, Google's is 10%. But why would Ecosia only have 2% when it drives the incentive to click on ads? The percentage rate should be much higher than Google's, no matter how many people use it (since it's a percentage rate, not a count). Ecosia is probably getting a lot more money than they claim they are. It's true, WWF endorses Ecosia and prints the receipts for each donation, but should Ecosia cover up the actual CTR with a fake one (2%, which is practically impossible for any search engine), they could easily slip by the WWF while still being endorsed. On top of that, Ecosia claims that no personal data is used. But all you have to do is look at the statistics of access to the website. The separation-by-country automatically means that they log the IPs of users who access the website and process the data from each individual, just like any other average website. It doesn't add up. The percentage rate, the statistics, the various identical websites... The idea sounds good, but what's really being done is what we should be looking for. If Ecosia isn't legitimate, we have a responsibility to not use it. If it is legit, and all my diggings are just pure coinsidence, by all means, we should use it. But I'm just saying... don't judge a book by its cover. Last edited by Woodsprite; 08-14-2010 at 07:14 PM. 
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#3
08-16-2010, 08:57 PM
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Quote:
__________________
"I would rather be a could-be if I cannot be an are,
Because a could-be is a maybe that is reaching for a star. I would rather be a has-been than a might-have-been, by far, For a might-have-been has never been, but a has was once an are". -Milton Berle
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#4
08-15-2010, 03:51 AM
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TL;DR lol jk
Well...all I can say is I wish I knew for sure whether it is legitimate or not. You've obviously done quite a bit of research into it. I'll keep using it for now.
__________________
I may not be as excited about Avatar as I use to be. But, I will never forget that it changed my life. As our bodies die, all the stars reply, "Now you see the lie"  "Bide your time and hold out hope"
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#6
08-15-2010, 04:12 AM
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828.4 m^2...supposedly...
__________________
I may not be as excited about Avatar as I use to be. But, I will never forget that it changed my life. As our bodies die, all the stars reply, "Now you see the lie" "Bide your time and hold out hope"
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#7
08-15-2010, 04:19 AM
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good on you
 although this whole thing does seem a bit too easy or too good to be true i dont completely doubt it. im certain some of what they claim (80% of money goes towards saving the forest) is actually used for this purpose. Well, using ecosia isn't going to kill anyone or anything so  just keep doing what you do
__________________
There are many dangers on Pandora, and one of the subtlest is that you may come to love it too much. 
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#8
08-16-2010, 07:27 PM
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Okay, here's a few things that not everybody is understanding about Google's program...
Google delivers the ads on these websites as well as the search results. Therefore, everything except the layout you see on the site is Google. Additionally, the fact that you can find demographic information about these sites is no surprise. Give me any site, maybe even TOS (I'm not bothering to check), and type it into Alexa/Quantcast. If there's enough traffic to/from it, you can find the breakdown based on ethnicity, age, income, and more. Even just browsing on the internet is not private at all, I assure you. And, if you're concerned about privacy, why on earth would you use Google? They have the most sophisticated information gathering programs for their users - They track where you go and what you do to deliver more targeted ads. Many websites do this, Google included. I can't comment on the legitimacy of this website's claims about donating the money, but I can assure you that your personal information and Google's checkbook will remain in the same condition regardless of whether you use it or not. /soapbox
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#9
08-16-2010, 08:18 PM
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...But we aren't talking about Google, though.
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#10
08-16-2010, 08:46 PM
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I only mentioned it because the site has a connection to google, and about the search results delivered, and so on.
Bah, it doesn't matter! I just want everyone to be informed So... How 'bout that local sports team?
__________________
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#11
08-16-2010, 08:48 PM
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Quote:
 *Did not know* *Has learned something new*
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#12
08-16-2010, 10:35 PM
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I agree about the use of Bing/Yahoo results, it isn't the first trick they've tried (including actually PAYING people to use their search engines before)... Sure, it's a nice idea, but a quick look shows that the site is actually run for profit, so perhaps not all it seems to be.
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