Illustration of overlapping browser windows with Ecosia’s logo, a tree graphic, Firefox’s logo, and the text “Together for a better web,” alongside a search bar with a green cursor.

Your tech choices matter more than ever. That’s why at Mozilla, we believe in empowering users to make informed decisions that align with their values. In that spirit, we’re excited to announce our partnership with Ecosia, a search engine that prioritizes sustainability, and social impact.

Did you know you could choose the search engine of your choice right from your Firefox URL bar? Whether you prioritize privacy, climate protection, or simply want a search experience tailored to your preferences, we’ve got you covered.

Ecosia goes beyond data protection by addressing environmental concerns. Every search made through the search engine contributes to tree-planting projects worldwide, helping to combat deforestation and regenerate the planet. Ecosia planted over 215 million trees, across the planet biodiversity hotspots, making a tangible difference in the fight against climate change. Just like Mozilla, they are committed to creating a better internet, and world, for everyone.

Together, Mozilla, Firefox and Ecosia are contributing to a web that is more open and inclusive, but above all — one where you can make an informed choice about what tech you use and why. Your tech choices make a difference.

As Firefox and Mozilla continue to champion user empowerment and innovation, we invite you to join us in shaping a web that makes the world better. Together, let’s make a positive impact — one search at a time.

  • Luna@lemdro.id
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    6 days ago

    So… what does this partnership actually mean? Will Ecosia be the default search engine once the deal with Google ends?

  • LWD@lemm.ee
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    6 days ago

    Whether you prioritize privacy*, climate protection, or simply want a search experience tailored to your preferences, we’ve got you covered.

    Ecosia goes beyond data protection by addressing environmental concerns…

    Together, Mozilla, Firefox and Ecosia are contributing to a web that is more open and inclusive, but above all — one where you can make an informed choice about what tech you use and why. Your tech choices make a difference.

    Someone should tell Mozilla about the AI-sized environmental concern in their browser?

    * ETA: Ecosia doesn’t mention privacy as a feature anywhere on its homepage. (I’m not counting the link to its unimpressive privacy policy.) They call themselves “Google, but greener”, and I believe them.

    • hangonasecond@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      In that sentence, they’re not referring to Ecosia specifically. Rather, they’re implying that you can choose a search engine which aligns to that value. A little weird to include it with no examples, in a post specifically about Ecosia, but I believe that’s the intent.

      • LWD@lemm.ee
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        5 days ago

        To wit, the very next sentence sure does seem to say that Ecosia is private.

        Ecosia goes beyond data protection by addressing environmental concerns.

    • OneMeaningManyNames@lemmy.ml
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      6 days ago

      Someone should tell Mozilla about the AI-sized environmental concern in their browser?

      It’s called offset /s

  • harsh3466@lemmy.ml
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    6 days ago

    Mozilla is on a great tear. Layoffs, pointless rebrand, and now a shit privacy greenwashing search engine partnership. I’m so excited for the future of Firefox.

    • pyre@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      oh no, don’t take away Google results that fill the entire screen with ads and irrelevant bullshit that relies my stolen data before my actual search terms!

      • Atemu@lemmy.ml
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        5 days ago

        Ecosia being any better in this regard would be news to me. They also rely on ads for funding.

      • Atemu@lemmy.ml
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        5 days ago

        Oh they’ve been getting worse for sure but Bing is still worse. I’ve used the Bing index via DuckDuckGo for years and it’s quite bad.

        I now use Kagi which uses both Google and Bing indices (among others) and it’s much better and I think most of that is because the Google index is used.

        • tb_@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          I keep hearing about Kagi, maybe I should try it sometime.

          DDG has been quite serviceable to me, however. If I can’t find something I can just add a quick !g to my already existing query and look it up on Google instead, which I’ve found rather convenient.

          • Atemu@lemmy.ml
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            5 days ago

            If I can’t find something I can just add a quick !g to my already existing query and look it up on Google instead, which I’ve found rather convenient.

            Yeah I used to do the same (but with !s).

            It’s much more convenient to just have good search results to begin with though. Kagi uses the Google index and a few others and you have your own filtering and ranking on top.

            In the beginning I felt tempted to do !s a few times too but the results were always worse, so I quickly unlearned doing that.

            Executing bangs is also a lot quicker with Kagi; DDG is kind of a slog.

            • tb_@lemmy.world
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              5 days ago

              but with !s

              Is that built-in, or do you have to configure it yourself? Configuring one is fine, but DDG has quite a few I semi-frequently use (!i, !g, !gi, !yt, !w, !gt), even Google itself feels like a downgrade when I want to search an image and I manually have to click the ‘images’ tab after performing my query.

              It’s much more convenient to just have good search results to begin with though

              I agree, which is why I’ve been happy to continue using DDG.

              • Atemu@lemmy.ml
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                5 days ago

                Is that built-in, or do you have to configure it yourself

                It’s the official bang for Startpage. You can’t configure custom bangs in DDG; Kagi can do that.

                I agree, which is why I’ve been happy to continue using DDG.

                I’ve found DDG/bing’s results to be quite lacking.

                • tb_@lemmy.world
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                  5 days ago

                  It’s the official bang for Startpage. You can’t configure custom bangs in DDG; Kagi can do that.

                  Oh, like so. When you said “same” I assumed you meant Google as well, and I found !s to be an intuitive bang for that. Startpage makes more sense, I know they get their results through Google.

                  I’ve found DDG/bing’s results to be quite lacking.

                  It seems our experiences have been different, then.

  • DrDystopia@lemy.lol
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    6 days ago

    Ecosia, the “green” search engine with AI chat. Perfect match for Firefox, the browser ever more integrated with AI technology.

    I’ve just given up on Mozilla, using Cromite after a decade of Firefox/Fennec on desktop and mobile had been such an upgrade.

    • Id still trust/prefer a firefox based browser than something chromium based. Their are a lot of good firefox forks out their and it helps make googles stranglehold of web standards slower. I wish u luck one manifest v2 gets killed (ik its still supported for some forks of chromium but how long is that gonna last?)

      • DrDystopia@lemy.lol
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        6 days ago

        What do you mean by trusting? I trust Mozilla to increase the executives wages at the cost of everybody in the organisation. I trust that they’ll incorporate more and more features I find unwanted. Privacy-wise I haven’t trusted Mozilla since telemetry was opt-out. Security wise I haven’t trusted any browser for decades.

        Each to their own, I hope you’re happy with your setup.

        • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world
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          6 days ago

          Unfortunately it’s more complex than that, because of the issue of the rendering engine. If Firefox-based browsers disappear, the W3C (which controls web standards, including questions of privacy) will be de-facto controlled by a cabal of corporations. The last voice that cares even slightly about our privacy will be gone.

          Opt-out telemetry is bad, overpaid executives is bad. The alternative is worse.

          • OneMeaningManyNames@lemmy.ml
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            6 days ago

            With no intention of stirring the pot, this sounds just like the pre-election arguments in favor of Democrats.

            The last voice that cares even slightly about our privacy will be gone.

            The emphasis here should be on “even slightly” rather than the dramatic effect of “the last voice”.

            I mean, if this slice approaches zero, then why it is better to stay with Firefox rather than moving on to more radical solutions?

            • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world
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              6 days ago

              Indeed, this is just the pragmatism-vs-idealism debate.

              I am a pragmatist, you are an idealist. In my view, by asking for everything you are more likely to get nothing. It’s not worth it. It’s irresponsible.

              this sounds just like the pre-election arguments in favor of Democrats.

              Yes, and excellent arguments they were. What a different world we might live in today if just a handful of idealists had decided to suck it up and vote for the Democrat instead of the third-party purist who made their heart sing.

              if this slice approaches zero, then why it is better to stay with Firefox rather than moving on to more radical solutions?

              Because history shows that “radical solutions” are almost always a mirage. We already have an excellent browser made by a flawed but generally admirable company. If there are problems, the solution is to fix them, not to burn it all down.

              • OneMeaningManyNames@lemmy.ml
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                3 days ago

                if just a handful of idealists

                If they are so few why does their vote matter that much? Futile attempt to undermine those who disagree with oneself on the basis of statistical sums.

                suck it up

                This arguments goes both ways. You say I suck it up, I say you suck it up, I don’t put my friends’ life/well-being on the line, for the sake of some half-baked moderation bias one considers self-evident truth.

                the third-party purist who made their heart sing.

                This is not what happened. All analyses point to that Harris failed to mobilize progressive voters. But this is not a discussion we are having right now, I have made my point very clear in this post including the contributions of others underneath.

                So this is a dishonest ad hominem argument, that contradicts itself. I expect it to be thought of as refuted, and one should not resurrect it as per the anti-sealioning policy.

                I am a pragmatist, you are an idealist.

                1. This is not what these words mean.
                2. You don’t get to define what other people determine themselves as.
                3. I am ideologue with certain material interests, and you are an ideologue with a different set of interest, who is willing to solve equations with human lives.
                4. A centrist although presenting as non-ideologue, is willing to protect his moderation bias even with the lives of other people he thinks as ideological purism.
                5. By continuously compromising with the worst amongst the humanity for precious election points he makes society worse for all of us.
                6. The real meaning of centrism is that you are flexible with your red lines against fascism and corporatism, and weigh human lives according to their ideological distance from oneself.

                history shows that “radical solutions” are almost always a mirage

                We have LibreWolf, Mullvad, TorBrowser, which are all Firefox forks of course. If we are talking about possible extinction of the gecko engine perhaps we could have this discussion anew, but because these other projects exist, not because we have to support any ill advised move Firefox makes that time and again alienates this community.

                To further this argument, there is, well, open source in general, which many people frame by the same “moderate-biased” arguments you propose. Nonetheless it exists and thrives, and it is well shown that the GPL licenses are better for developers. All this happens because of what you dismiss as “idealists”, from the era of Creative Commons, Independent Media Center, and the Internet Archive, to the Tor Project, Tails, SciHub and all other good things the internet has to offer comes from ideologues. Even Lemmy that you are currently using.

                So whatever is outside the centrist’s tunnel vision is just non-existent. That makes the centrist an extremist naive empiricist, lacking non only object constancy but also the intellectual sophistication to stipulate configurations of the world outside his immediate and temporary surroundings.

                The blithe centrist happily leeches off to preach ad nauseam that middle ground with spooks, fascists and advertisers is a universal truth we must blindly succumb to. Then it is shown that the centrist is not just naive or misguided but actively hostile and dishonest (see first section of this comment for evidence of your logical inconsistency and dishonesty) with people of different opinions, so they prove themselves not to be centrist at all, but diet fascists.

                To sum up, in this post I have shown that:

                • Centrists can be tactically motivated and intellectually dishonest.
                • Centrist are in fact intolerant of views different than theirs.
                • Centrists are immoral and undemocratic, in their pursuit of middle ground with perpetrators of exploitation and discrimination.
                • Centrists are in fact extremist in their naive empiricism, tunnel vision, and glorification of the status quo that was given to them, which is by definition conservative.

                Combining common terms from the above propositions: Centrists are tactically motivated, intellectually dishonest, intolerant to difference of opinion, indifferent to the rights of others, immoral and undemocratic apologists of exploitation and discrimination, extremist in their empiricism and conservativism.

                Centrist? Better call them sentries of the status quo. Disclaimer: I hate centrists with a burning passion.

                • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world
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                  3 days ago

                  The angry vituperative tone here just makes me disinclined to read closely. Seriously, if you want convince people, this is not the way to to do it. It’s a shame because you seem to have some valid points.

              • kipo@lemm.ee
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                5 days ago

                Browser choice and presidential vote are so different from one another as to have no value in their comparison.

                If you insist on crapping on third-party US American voters, please do it in the politics community in Lemmy.world.

                • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world
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                  5 days ago

                  please do it in the politics community in

                  To spare you the trauma of hearing an opinion you don’t agree with? Contemporary US politics in a microcosm!

                  It was not me who made the comparison.

          • DrDystopia@lemy.lol
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            6 days ago

            No, my solution is ditching the entire overbloated web standards we have today and go the small web route where idealists can make useable software without being a giant organisation, targeted both by commercial and state interests.

            But that’s not going to happen any more than Mozilla will go back to being a decent org.

              • DrDystopia@lemy.lol
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                6 days ago

                I’ve used both Mull and Iceraven on phone, Librewolf on desktop. I went back to stock FF and tweaked it on desktop because it was tuned differently than I wanted - Particularly when it came to dark mode support. On phone I always settled for Iceraven but it’s miles behind chromium forks when it comes to tab management (ironically, FF is miles ahead when it comes to tab management on desktop).

    • hubobes@sh.itjust.works
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      4 days ago

      What exactly is the issue you have with Mozillas AI efforts? They use the technology in a private and sensible way as far as I can tell. Maybe I missed something they did.

      • LWD@lemm.ee
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        4 days ago

        You missed their AI sidebar feature, which only feeds your data to corporations by default. Or their Orbit extension, which ditto. (The latter also points to the Mozilla FakeSpot privacy policy, which is clear about selling your browsing and location data to advertisers. No, I’m not joking. It’s not clear whether Orbit is FakeSpot adjacent…)

        Fakespot itself is an AI powered Mozilla subsidiary that has a history dabbling with NFTs.

        Mozilla has even dumped money into Hugging Face (a company that’s been given hundreds of millions from other corpos like Salesforce and Nvidia).

    • 𝘋𝘪𝘳𝘬@lemmy.ml
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      6 days ago

      Even the worst default browser on the worst cheap China phone from the worst grey market is an upgrade to mobile Firefox. This is just a dumpster fire since release and Mozilla never cared about it even one single bit. You cannot even set a homepage in this junkware excuse for a browser.

    • BlackEco@lemmy.blackeco.com
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      6 days ago

      Mozilla will probably lose (part of or all of, it’s not clear yet) Google’s funding following their monopoly case, so it’s probably best for them to look for other revenue sources.

      • 𝘋𝘪𝘳𝘬@lemmy.ml
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        6 days ago

        They could also stop all this nonsense crap projects they sink money in without any real benefit, and focus mainly on the browser. This would give the browser likely 500% more funding than it has right now.

        Have one product, but make it a perfect product.

        • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.world
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          6 days ago

          So after constantly yelling at Mozilla for 10+ years they should do all kinds of things like a VPN, now we no longer find them to experiment to find alternative money sources?

          • 𝘋𝘪𝘳𝘬@lemmy.ml
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            5 days ago

            The money sources are not the issue. The money sinks are. An no-one ever yelled at Mozilla to offer a VPN.

            • beleza pura@lemmy.eco.br
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              5 days ago

              The money sources are not the issue

              lolwhat

              did you miss the part where mozilla depends on mostly google money to survive? which they’ve been trying to correct for years but failed? and now they’re om the verge of losing most of it?

                • beleza pura@lemmy.eco.br
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                  3 days ago

                  how much do you think chasing the web “standards” set by one of the largest companies on the planet without falling behind costs? ever wonder why nobody else has been able to keep up with chrome? also, do you think it’s not important to ensure web standards are open and having the lawyers and lobbyists to prevent web standards to go to shit? do you think the only important thing is the actual application? firefox doesn’t in a vacuum. if mozilla was just a bunch of computer nerds coding very hard to make a browser, it would’ve gone bankrupt and firefox would’ve died ages ago

                  i’m not even saying mozilla isn’t doing anything stupid, it’s just that it frustrates me how computer nerds always think the coding is the only thing that matters in a software project

            • LWD@lemm.ee
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              5 days ago

              I was waiting for the 2023 forms to drop.

              I’m shocked to find out Mitchell Baker has taken a pay cut of ~$600,000, now struggling at a much more relatable $6.2 million instead of $6.9 million

              (ETA $600,000 is also her “base” salary, the rest of the $6.2m is her “bonus.” She lost one base salary worth of bonuses last year.)

              • beleza pura@lemmy.eco.br
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                5 days ago

                still, 6 mil is ~10% of their revenue. it’s egregious, but cutting the ceo’s sallary to zero dollars even would solve nothing

                • LWD@lemm.ee
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                  5 days ago

                  That salary could have been redistributed among the employees Mozilla laid off in the Advocacy division, especially right before they published a report claiming Mozilla needed to be known for advocacy and not Firefox. Or put towards Firefox. Or any combination.

                  Just removing Mitchell Baker’s bonus would already be the majority of that.

        • Ephera@lemmy.ml
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          6 days ago

          Their other projects mostly exist, because those make money. The browser hardly does so, outside of the search engine deals.

      • UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee
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        6 days ago

        Oh, that’s bad. Ecosia won’t even give them a fraction of the revenue google does… I’ve no idea how they’re going to continue going on…

  • zante@slrpnk.net
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    6 days ago

    I’ve been using ecosia for a few months now after ditching duck duck go after long long time .

    It’s shit.

    I tend to use GPT when I want to find anything.