Berlin-based startup Ecosia announces new co-owner Tim Schumacher, known as founder and former manager of multiple Internet projects (such as Sedo, Affili.net and Eyeo/Adblock Plus).
According to the website, the search engine donates 80 percent of its income to a tree planting program. With over 200,000 daily active users almost 40,000 trees have already been planted, making an overall donation of over € 1.5 million.
While their layout is similar to the one of Google, search results come from Yahoo and Bing, enhanced with Ecosia’s own algorithms.
“Next step will be a revamped and greatly improved search experience, which we will be launching later this month,” Tim Schumacher told VentureVillage.
Unlike other startups, he states in his blogpost on the Ecosia’s website, the company “certainly doesn’t run Ecosia looking for an exit: We run it because the Internet needs a search engine alternative that leverages the enormous revenue generated by web search” and “We don’t look at profits, we look at our ‘triple bottom line’”.
