Tree-planting Ecocho search engine dumped by Google

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Thursday, 24 April 2008 10:06

Opinion and Analysis

Ecocho’s blog apologises for the situation, and calls Google’s move ominous – something that would hardly endear Ecocho to Google in a hurry.

The blog states: “We are very sorry for the inconvenience. It is certainly an ominous move by the search giant, especially as only a couple of days ago Yahoo expressed further positive support for the project, even offering to host it for us (in fairness, Yahoo showed great excitement for the project from day one when we spoke with them). Thank you all for your fantastic support of Ecocho!”

Of course, Yahoo needs all the additional traffic it can get, so it’s no big surprise that Yahoo is welcoming the site with open arms.

The blog posting concludes with: “We’d appreciate you guys discussing the issue with us on this blog - we’d really love to hear from all of you who’ve expressed such inspiring support for the project. In the meantime, we encourage you to use Ecocho’s Yahoo function for all your searches.”

Although the site has received a lot of support from Internet users, in my mind, the Ecocho site smacks of environmental opportunism. Sure, it’s great that something as simple as an online search for information can provide a company the ability to verifiably buy carbon credits which arise from tree planting.

But Google itself already claims to be carbon neutral, and I’m much more inclined to believe Google than a website which simply passes through search results from Google.

The Ecocho site notes that its carbon credits provider is Global Carbon Exchange (GCX), a company that purchases credits only from the official, government controlled New South Wales Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme.

In addition, audit firm KPMG will conduct “a quarterly and final year-end audit, to check that the total amount of credits issued each month for the 12 months up to June is equal to amount retired”.

No doubt Ecocho will continue offering its eco-tree-enviro-carbon-neutral-friendly service, and while it is noble, doesn’t it just seem like another eco bandwagon jumper? It does to me.