To Kroll, it’s nearly good enough to stop climate change.
In order to sell, the foundation would have to be convinced that the sale will result in more trees being planted.īeneath all of this is the assumption that planting trees is a good idea. Ecosia is not permitted to issue shareholder dividends, and only employees can be shareholders. So, they legislated away their power to do so.Įcosia describes itself as a “purpose company,” meaning, according to Kroll, that a foundation holds 1 percent of its shares, 99 percent of its capital, and veto rights over any sale of the company.
Kroll and the other executives could sell, become millionaires, and move onto whatever sort of project they’re in the mood for. After all, with 50 percent margins, there is plenty of room to provide shareholder dividends while still putting an impressive number of trees in the ground. As it grows, the possibility of cashing out becomes weightier. In making their own operation sustainable, Ecosia’s founders foresaw a growing threat: their company’s value. The heavy lifting of operating a search engine is outsourced to a tech colossus. Ecosia pays for its own servers, maintains a browser plug-in and mobile app, and the rest of the team works on marketing and operations. Microsoft does not disclose how many engineers work specifically on Bing, but it’s clear from financial reporting around Bing that the company’s budget is several orders of magnitude greater than Ecosia’s.
Ecosia employs around 25 software engineers. The answer is that Ecosia can collect the profits per click of a major search engine (minus Microsoft’s cut) while spending next to nothing on the technology to create and maintain such a service. How is it that Ecosia has been merrily pumping out month after month in which it brings in at least double its total cost of operating-unheard of for nearly any business-while its technological backbone only recently became profitable?