The Good Search Engine: Web Search Without Advertising Benefits Users and the Climate

As the name suggests, the GOOD search engine intends to make searching on the internet a positive thing. GOOD does this by regularly supporting selected projects with four-figure sums. Current examples include the organisation HateAid, which promotes human rights in the digital space, and Thaki, a digital school for displaced people in Lebanon. As a social enterprise, the search engine operates on a non-profit basis; the company shares are held by the charitable foundation GOOD Impact.

At the end of November 2024, GOOD switched from a free search engine to a paid model. In return, the social enterprise promises a search without advertising that is climate-friendly and unassociated with big tech. We interviewed Andreas Renner, co-founder of GOOD, to ask him about this decision and its intended impact.

Andreas, what prompted you to take this step?

The influence of the advertising industry on internet search results has reached frightening dimensions. In its last quarterly report, Google reported 50 billion US dollars in advertising revenue for Google Search alone. So much money is being used to ensure that you don’t primarily find what you’re looking for, but what advertisers pay for. That’s absurd.

With the GOOD search engine—the search engine for a better world—we wanted to offer a value-based service from the outset and give something back to society. We initially thought that it would be enough to sign contracts with the big tech companies like everyone else, but to use the revenue for a good cause. However, the more we immersed ourselves in the search engine market, the clearer it became that this was not enough. The biggest lever to make a positive impact lies in our core product: web search itself. This must be aligned with the needs of users, society and the environment. Google looks to me like an advertising platform with a search engine attached. Is that really what we want?

With all the adverts, searching online is becoming more confusing. You sometimes have to look very closely to recognise which are genuine search results and which are paid ads. And on top of that, the system is unfair. Smaller brands in particular—including most sustainable brands—do not have the same advertising budgets as the big players. They are relegated to lower positions on the search results page. Those with the biggest advertising budgets are pushing ahead. I wrote my doctoral thesis on the social market economy. What we see here is a far cry from that. We want to correct this to some extent with our offer of a value-based, ad-free search.

To what extent have you been dependent on big tech companies so far?

The problem is that almost all search engines play along and work with big tech, whether it’s DuckDuckGo, Startpage, Ecosia, Qwant or whatever they’re called. That’s how we started. This doesn’t have much to do with the technical superiority of Google or Microsoft Bing. There are already strong, independent search algorithms such as Brave or Mojeek.

Ultimately, it’s always about money. If you want to make your search engine available free of charge, you can’t avoid Google or Microsoft Bing. This is because they control the advertising market for search engines, at least in the western world. The reason is quite simple: in order to finance a search engine via advertising, one or more suitable adverts must be found for each of an incredibly large number of different search queries. It’s a classic ‘winner takes it all’ situation.

With more than four billion users, Google has by far the best position in the market to build a powerful advertising network for search engines. In addition, Google has access to a large number of data points and has largely perfected the system to create meaningful user profiles for users. This means that adverts can be targeted—above all, at a high price. This is the secret behind the 50 billion dollars I mentioned above.

Alternative search engines that want to use Google’s advertising network have to make considerable compromises. This is because every promise of data protection ends when a sponsored link is clicked on, even with the so-called ‘data protection-orientated’ search engines. In addition, a search engine can’t influence which adverts are displayed. Often they are not the most ethical or sustainable brands.

And what does your new independence look like?

We are now out of this system and overjoyed about it. With GOOD, we can now offer an unbiased search, don’t have to compromise on data protection and contribute to more diversity—and fewer monopolies—on the web. And we have overcome the ethical dilemma in which we found ourselves. For the most part, advertising calls for more consumption and usually that consumption isn’t sustainable. We want to achieve the exact opposite with our social commitment and the projects we support. Now everything is coherent.

There is also a positive side effect. GOOD is a data-saving search engine. Unlike ad trackers, we don’t collect any waste data, keeping the CO2 consumption of web searches to a minimum.

To what extent do ad trackers worsen a search engine’s carbon footprint?

Every query from an advertising tracker increases the amount of data that is transmitted—and therefore the power consumption. Storing the collected tracking data requires additional computing power and storage capacity on the server side. The greatest consumption occurs when the collected data is analysed by AI and machine learning, which take up considerable computing resources.

Why did you decide in favour of the Brave search index?

Brave is an independent index created from scratch—which, incidentally, was largely developed in Germany.

Brave does not process any more data than necessary, saving energy and enabling data protection. In our opinion, Brave currently offers the best search results for alternative search engines.

A major advantage for GOOD as an independent search engine is our openness to technology. We are not tied to one index. We closely follow European developments, such as the work on an open web index by the Open Search Foundation or the search index Mojeek from the UK. The developments of the French search engine Qwant are also very promising. Qwant has been trying for some time to detach its search index from Microsoft Bing and has now joined forces with Ecosia to develop its own search index via their joint venture European Search Perspective.

A lot is happening in this field and we assume that we will feed our search index with additional sources in the future. We also firmly believe that we will increasingly integrate AI applications in the future. There are great options here, especially in the open source sector.

Will the new search index change the search results?

There are no longer big differences between different search engines. We tested various alternative options and were amazed at how smooth the switch was for users.

Of course, many people are used to Google, not least because it has a whole universe of applications attached to it. We can’t offer that. But our search is clearer, focussing on the essentials. And that doesn’t include commercial advertising.

So as not to give the wrong impression: we are not anti-Google across the board, even if we do criticise some developments. Ultimately, it’s often about striking the right balance between how much big tech each of us wants to use. As of today, we have placed a link to Google on the menu bar. This allows everyone to compare GOOD with Google without having to retype a search query. It’s always good to have a choice.

Are there other search engines that are based on a payment model like yours?

The boom in AI applications is a good indicator. Premium versions of ChatGPT and other AI tools use a subscription-based model.

The situation is different with traditional search engines. Only a few have cut ties with big tech and the commercial advertising industry and switched to a subscription model. But there are a few pioneers. The young search engine Kagi from California springs to mind. It relies on a paid model and centres its entire communication around the topic of freedom from advertising. The German metasearch engine Metager discontinued its free service in the summer, albeit rather involuntarily. Its long-standing partner Yahoo abruptly ended their cooperation. Brave offers an optional premium model for its web search as a subscription. However, the three examples mentioned do not have a sustainability strategy comparable to ours.

How did you calculate the prices for your payment model?

We have deliberately opted for a social payment model in which everyone decides what they can afford. The Basic subscription is two euros a month, the Impact subscription is five euros and the Karma subscription for true fans and supporters of our model is ten euros a month. The more our users donate, the more we can pursue our mission to initiate social change. We have also developed customised deals for B2B partners.

The basic subscription is very tightly calculated. Around one third of the payment goes to volume-dependent costs that arise from the processing of search queries, another third to costs for payment transactions, subscription administration and VAT. The final third is then used to cover other operating costs, including the CO2 offset of the web search and the further development of the search engine.

With our other subscriptions, there is of course more room for manoeuvre, especially with regard to our social commitment.

How has the response to your announcement been so far?

I was really pleased to see that a significant proportion of our subscribers opt for the Impact subscription or, less frequently, the Karma subscription. This shows us that we are on the right track and that our work is appreciated!

We also receive very positive feedback from schools, companies and even local authorities. For many, it is actually a ‘no-go’ to finance IT services via advertising. Our impression is that more and more people are becoming aware of this and realise how important it is to actively create protected, ad-free areas in the digital world.

What about your own CO2 emissions? Do you use green servers?

We have an ambitious sustainability strategy and see ourselves as a thoroughly green search engine. This starts with the fact that—as already mentioned—as a data-saving search engine, we minimise CO2 emissions from the outset. And of course we use green servers that are hosted in Germany and run on 100 percent green electricity.

But we also know that a large proportion (in fact, the majority) of energy consumption takes place in our partners’ data centres. By far the greatest energy consumption is caused because millions of websites have to be indexed in the background 24 hours a day—regardless of whether a search query is made or not. We save energy by cooperating with partners rather than developing our own search index.

Through our climate protection contributions, we consciously offset the CO2 emissions generated by the external data centres on a pro rata basis. We base this on calculations by the Öko-Institut, which analyse the entire value chain. Our climate protection is therefore independent of the climate protection efforts of our partners, so in case of doubt we consciously double our efforts.

You said that you want to integrate more AI applications. The main aim is to further improve search results, right? However, AI is a very energy-intensive technology. How does that fit in with your aim of keeping CO2 emissions low?

We will continue to keep CO2 consumption as low as possible, even with the increased use of AI. For AI applications in particular, a large proportion of energy consumption is generated when training AI, which happens independently of the respective enquiry. Here too, our focus will be on building on existing open source solutions or entering into strategic partnerships.

However, it is true that the consumption of a single AI query will be many times higher than that of an ordinary search query. There are estimates that a ChatGPT query generates 1.1 grams of CO2 per query. That is almost ten times as much as a simple Google search query. However, we already offset more than 1.1 grams of CO2 per search query, even though we have not yet integrated any AI, simply because we calculate conservatively overall.

We see ourselves as a social enterprise with an ethical compass. We are constantly monitoring developments and will always have to make decisions in order to find the best balance between top user experience, data protection and sustainability. I believe we have found a good course here and have already taken a decisive step with our ad-free offering, which reduces the influence of the advertising industry on our daily searches!

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