Ecosia, the tree planting search engine, has expanded its sustainable presence by launching a new cross-platform browser. The browser, built on top of Chromium, is available for Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android. While there aren’t many feature differences from Chrome, users can customize the landing page and remove sections they don’t prefer.
Michael Metcalf, Ecosia’s chief product officer, explained that the company built the browser to reach its users where they are and expand its footprint. Currently, Ecosia’s main use case is search, but with the browser, they aim to extend into other aspects of browsing experiences.
In addition to the browser launch, Ecosia has introduced an affiliate shopping program. Users will see links to popular shopping sites like Amazon, eBay, and Decathlon under the sponsored links section. All the money earned through affiliate revenues will be used to plant trees and support other green projects. Ecosia has committed to generating 25Wh of clean energy per user each day they browse.
Metcalf acknowledged that while Ecosia promotes lower consumption, they understand that people shop frequently. With the affiliate program, they have an opportunity to give back. In the future, Ecosia plans to improve the affiliate shopping interface, integrate its AI chatbot, and offer more customization options for the browser.
The company aims to target its current user base of 20 million and casual green users initially. Ecosia is aware that it’s challenging to ask people to switch browsers, so they will focus on retaining their existing users while marketing to new ones. During early beta testing, Ecosia was pleased with the retention rate but doesn’t have data on whether switching to their browser impacts the amount of Ecosia searches.
Last year, Ecosia made structural changes to its search engine by experimenting with Google search in select markets. While they had been using Bing as their sole search provider, they expanded to using System1, which syndicates search results from Microsoft Bing, Startpage, and Info.com in other geographies.
Earlier this year, Ecosia celebrated a significant milestone of planting over 200 million trees across 95,000 locations worldwide. The new browser and the affiliate shopping program will help support their ongoing efforts in reforestation and sustainability.