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Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)

blog.ecosia.org

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Re: Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)

#11

Post by dwedge »

dmbche wrote: post #4
aswerty wrote: post #3

I really like the idea of Ecosia and Steward Owned companies, but as somebody who wants out of the Ad game completely, uses uBlock Origin religiously and pays for services like email and search. I haven't actually used Ecosia, but am interested in others experiences with it. But I imagine in the HN crowd a lot of other people fit the same profile as myself.

You pay for search and email? What services do you use? May I ask you why, if you're wanting to go into it?

I wish more people would self-host email. Email getting centralised to a handful of providers is no good for anyone.

Re: Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)

#12

Post by stavros »

dwedge wrote: post #8

I'm sure Ecosia are a good company, but headlines like this always make me a little suspicious. Non profits make a lot of money for their founders without it ever being "profit". Ecosia are reporting just over 600K euros a month in wages, I'd love to see the split and what % of that goes to the CEO. You don't need to sell a business if you have plenty of income from it every month - especially if now that can't be ta…

No, but it aligns with the interests of the consumers better if you're actually targeting consumers (for the recurring revenue) rather than burning cash to get as many users as you can lock in, and then selling to someone who will milk them when they have no option.

Re: Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)

#13

Post by stavros »

dmbche wrote: post #4
aswerty wrote: post #3

I really like the idea of Ecosia and Steward Owned companies, but as somebody who wants out of the Ad game completely, uses uBlock Origin religiously and pays for services like email and search. I haven't actually used Ecosia, but am interested in others experiences with it. But I imagine in the HN crowd a lot of other people fit the same profile as myself.

You pay for search and email? What services do you use? May I ask you why, if you're wanting to go into it?

Not the GP, but I pay for Fastmail because it's just so much better than Gmail, and I pay for Kagi sometimes because it's generally better than Google.

Re: Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)

#14

Post by dwedge »

stavros wrote: post #12
dwedge wrote: post #8

I'm sure Ecosia are a good company, but headlines like this always make me a little suspicious. Non profits make a lot of money for their founders without it ever being "profit". Ecosia are reporting just over 600K euros a month in wages, I'd love to see the split and what % of that goes to the CEO. You don't need to sell a business if you have plenty of income from it every month - especially if now that can't be ta…

No, but it aligns with the interests of the consumers better if you're actually targeting consumers (for the recurring revenue) rather than burning cash to get as many users as you can lock in, and then selling to someone who will milk them when they have no option.

That's true, but the product can still get worse chasing revenue from those consumers.

Re: Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)

#15

Post by jasoncartwright »

Ecosia have been going a while, and I don't want to be that guy 'just asking questions', but...

Is there some sort of independent verification of the trees being planted and their impact? I wonder if there is a study into the effect of their interesting green reinvestment setup vs a traditional for-profit businesses (Google is the obvious example) and their environmental impacts.

Re: Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)

#16

Post by stavros »

dwedge wrote: post #14
stavros wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but it aligns with the interests of the consumers better if you're actually targeting consumers (for the recurring revenue) rather than burning cash to get as many users as you can lock in, and then selling to someone who will milk them when they have no option.

That's true, but the product can still get worse chasing revenue from those consumers.

Hm, I've seen this line of argumentation a lot, and I'd like to name it as a fallacy. It's basically "perfect is the enemy of the good", where one good action is dismissed because it's still not perfect.

The product will get less bad for me when chasing revenue from me than how bad it will get for me when it's chasing revenue from someone who isn't me.

Re: Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)

#17

Post by Toutouxc »

dmbche wrote: post #4
aswerty wrote: post #3

I really like the idea of Ecosia and Steward Owned companies, but as somebody who wants out of the Ad game completely, uses uBlock Origin religiously and pays for services like email and search. I haven't actually used Ecosia, but am interested in others experiences with it. But I imagine in the HN crowd a lot of other people fit the same profile as myself.

You pay for search and email? What services do you use? May I ask you why, if you're wanting to go into it?

In my case it's Kagi and Fastmail. Fastmail primarily because I don't want to support Google and Kagi because it's genuinely better than the alternatives.

Re: Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)

#19

Post by MattGaiser »

dwedge wrote: post #8

I'm sure Ecosia are a good company, but headlines like this always make me a little suspicious. Non profits make a lot of money for their founders without it ever being "profit". Ecosia are reporting just over 600K euros a month in wages, I'd love to see the split and what % of that goes to the CEO. You don't need to sell a business if you have plenty of income from it every month - especially if now that can't be ta…

Even if the CEO makes a million a year, it is a pittance compared to the potential equity value of a tech company.

Re: Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)

#20

Post by dwedge »

stavros wrote: post #16
dwedge wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true, but the product can still get worse chasing revenue from those consumers.

Hm, I've seen this line of argumentation a lot, and I'd like to name it as a fallacy. It's basically "perfect is the enemy of the good", where one good action is dismissed because it's still not perfect. The product will get less bad for me when chasing revenue from me than how bad it will get for me when it's chasing revenue from someone who isn't me.

> The product will get less bad for me when chasing revenue from me than how bad it will get for me when it's chasing revenue from someone who isn't me.

I'd like to name this as a fallacy - begging the question. The product will be better chasing revenue from you because it will be worse chasing revenue from someone else.

Every company has the option of chasing extra revenue from customers. This company has no other options. Perhaps this makes them better as a company and want to develop a better product so that people naturally want to use it more. Or perhaps they, like so many companies before them, try to see how much they can milk out of their userbase before they lose it.

They also aren't immune to costs around them. If their office rent goes up, or power for their servers costs more, they have limited options. Reduce wages (unlikely), do less good, or get more from users.

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