Search Engine: Ecosia - Invests in Canadian reforesting initiatives 🌱
Unfortunately, there are no Canadian owned and operated search engines (they were all acquired by Americans! Yes really).
The next best alternative is Ecosia, which is the only major search engine that actually invests to Canadians' benefit. Ecosia partners with Tree Canada to regenerate Canadian forests.
In Canada, Ecosia’s reforestation project is located within the Acadian Forest and focuses on restoring its historic diversity in areas that have been degraded by centuries of intensive land use.
Ecosia is also B Corp Certified. This means they have changed their by-laws to be mission locked, and are required to consider stakeholders' interests such as employees, customers, and the environment.
Ecosia is a not-for-profit tech company that plants and protects trees. By dedicating 100% of its profits to the planet, Ecosia has planted over 214,229,374 million trees since its founding in December 2009. In addition to trees, Ecosia invests in environmental and social initiatives like regenerative agriculture, renewable energy and community-driven climate projects.
For myself, I think the community benefit is more important than the "cost" of seeing ads. Perhaps in the future, as Ecosia grows, they'll be able to offer paid ad free plans.
Alternatively, you can use a self hosted searxng instance, or try and find a local instance here: https://searx.space/
There's sadly no trees that are planted with this method though