Ecosia to join Chrome v81 default search engine choices

Ecosia, the Berlin-based search engine that uses its ad revenue for reforestation efforts, will be included among Chrome version 81’s default search engine choices in the U.S., UK, Germany, France and 43 other markets, TechCrunch first reported Thursday. Ecosia will be joining Google, Bing, Yahoo! and DuckDuckGo, which was added to the list this time last year.

Why we care

In 2019, Ecosia had a record year, with monthly active users growing from 8 million to 15 million. Although that only accounts for half a percent of the European desktop search market and less than a quarter of a percent of the European mobile search market, according to data from Statcounter, Ecosia is nipping at DuckDuckGo’s heels on desktop and is within .04% of catching up to Bing’s mobile market share (at the time of publication).

Ecosia’s inclusion as one of only five default search engine choices on desktop could increase its market share if users are motivated to switch their default.

More on the news

• Ecosia donates 80% of its ad profits to reforestation efforts around the globe.
• Ecosia boycotted Google’s Android choice screen auction in the EU, which CEO Christian Kroll referred to as exploitative. The company has not made any announcements on whether it will participate in future auctions, which occur quarterly.
• The Chromium version 81 update will also roll out DuckDuckGo and Yahoo as default choices in more markets as well.