Forestle

Forestle was an ecologically inspired website for Web, which was invented and initiated in 2008 by Christian Kroll. Goal of Web search was to save rainforest and work is CO2 neutral. The search results were from Yahoo, with the Forestle cooperated. Forestle was decommissioned on 1 January 2011. The search requests are forwarded automatically to the successor since Ecosia. The Search for Ecosia continue to contribute to the protection of the rainforest.

Contributions to sustainability

Forestle achieved in its search queries advertising revenue from clicks on so-called sponsors links. These text messages were delivered from Yahoo Search Marketing and displayed at Forestle addition to the normal search results, the partners divided the advertising revenue among themselves.

An area of ​​approximately 0.1 square meters was purchased and converted into rain forest nature reserves per query. The non-profit search engine, which derived ( for Forest) takes its name from the English word Forest, guaranteed 90% of its advertising revenue to the U.S. conservation organization, The Nature Conservancy to donate the order under its program " Adopt an Acre " rain forest areas bought time on the Osa Peninsula, and put under protection.

On the Forestle website If you started a search, this has been forwarded to Yahoo. The search itself took over Yahoo. This saved a Forestle own server infrastructure in the background that would be needed to search for Web pages and to generate search results. This was offset by a longer " transport routes " to the search query and the search results. Forestle sat on Yahoo yet own server on it, which also consumed current. Forestle was operated largely CO2 - neutral: All CO2 emissions for the production of electrical energy that was consumed by the server, the network and the computers of users of Forestle.org, was subsequent purchase of RECs for renewable energy balanced with another partner again. This is not true for the actual search process on the servers of Yahoo.

On the website donations documents were published monthly. It was also stated that Forestle was under regular monitoring of "The Nature Conservancy ". In order to maintain the then- protection, protection plans were prepared with timber companies and local authorities and financed.

It m² 10,319,493.0 square meters of rainforest were rescued. The number of searches have more than doubled from December 2008 to January 2009 of about 4,000 per day to about 10,000 per day, and were located on 8 February 2009, over 20,000 searches per day.

Forestle decommissioning

Search queries to Forestle are forwarded from 1 January 2011 to Ecosia. According to Forestle so the energy of the two projects by Christian Kroll is bundled because the development must be focused only on Ecosia. Search over Forestle helped that a total donation of 95,000 Euros was handed over to the environmental organization The Nature Conservancy. That corresponds to a sustainable protected area of ​​over 10 square kilometers of rainforest.

Functions

Awards

On 27 November 2009 Forestle the Utopia Award received a prize will be awarded with the German models, companies, organizations and products in the area of ​​sustainability.

" The green Internet search engine Forestle provides an easy and powerful way to contribute through the use of a daily service often consumed to protect existing rainforests. [ ... ] "

Partnership

Forestle cooperated initially with Google. After a few days ago, Google announced the collaboration with Forestle. Forestle the user would really urge to click on banners, so the reasoning. Forestle since worked together with Yahoo.

Background

Forestle was the first project of Christian Kroll, who is now two more "green" has developed search engine:

• The web search on Znout is not profit, but has set itself the goal of the total CO2 emissions caused by looking at Znout to compensate by buying renewable energy certificates. Znout collaborates with Google and was originally only a temporary solution, as Google announced the contract with Forestle. The CO2-neutral search should first be operated only during the transition from Forestle on Yahoo. Now Znout will continue as not actively developed side project.
• Ecosia works with Bing, Yahoo and the WWF. Compared to Forestle is at Ecosia far more rainforest for any query protected because the reforestation projects of The Nature Conservancy, the cost is higher.

Criticism

Forestle advertised with a CO2 - neutral search, which was true only partially. The company co2stats measured and analyzed the traffic of the website. The same extent, RECS certificates were purchased in retrospect from the U.S. company. Here, the power consumption of servers, network and the computers of visitors should be considered. However, it is simply relabeled by trading these Ökozertifikaten nuclear or coal-fired electricity in green energy; the actual ecological amount of current is not increased.