Purpose over Profit: GOOD Goes 100% Ad-Free

It’s possible: a web search free from the commercial influences of the advertising industry and tech giants.

GOOD stands for Purpose over Profit. We are now making a bold move by declaring our web search will be 100% ad-free and independent of Big Tech. This change significantly enhances the search experience, strengthens digital sovereignty, and reduces our carbon footprint.

With this decision, we are breaking away from the norm and elevating GOOD to a new level. Most alternative search engines rely on the search indices of Google and Bing, including the advertisements that often distract rather than guide users to their intended goals.

Resisting Commercial Pressure

When Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google in 1998, they envisioned a search engine free of advertising to maintain the integrity and quality of results. However, things turned out differently: in its latest annual report, Google reported advertising revenues of an astonishing $239 billion—a staggering figure that illustrates the advertising industry’s influence on what we find online. In Central Europe, advertisers likely spend over €20 per person each month to sponsor links on your Google search.

“Financing our engagement for social change and climate action through advertising, which often promotes increased consumption and less sustainable products, does not make sense. We are the first cause-related search engine which resolves this contradiction”

Andreas Renner, Co-Founder of GOOD—the search engine for a better world.

Like many search engines, we have participated in the existing system until now. However, as an ethically grounded social enterprise, we increasingly critique the influence of advertising:

• Distraction and Time Loss: Ads occupy valuable space on search results pages, diverting attention from what truly matters.
• Lack of Ethical Guidance: Most advertisements promote consumption without differentiating between sustainable and less sustainable options.
• Increased Corporate Power: Companies with large advertising budgets gain undue influence, leading to reduced diversity and greater market concentration.
• Poor Carbon Footprint: Ads generate unnecessary data waste (such as ad trackers) and increase energy consumption and CO2 emissions.
• Transparency Issues: Promises of data protection falter where sponsored links are involved. Financing a privacy-focused search engine with ads is an attempt to reconcile incompatible goals.

In contrast, ad-free searching with GOOD is beneficial in every way: good for you, good for society, and good for the environment.

Enhancing Digital Sovereignty

There’s another critical socio-political aspect supporting our departure from Google and Microsoft Bing. It undermines democratic opinion formation when two tech companies dictate what we find online and how search results are ranked. A functioning democracy requires diversity and competition.

Since the beginning of this year, we have gradually distanced ourselves from Big Tech and have been sourcing our search results via Brave since January 2024 while still utilizing Microsoft Bing for ads. Our search results are based on an independent index developed from scratch. We have created widgets, browser extensions, and mobile apps independently or in collaboration with partners, often using open-source principles. In the future, we plan to integrate additional independent search indices and develop new features to solidify our position as a sustainable, non-commercial search engine.

Subscription Model and New Alliances: Funding Our Commitment to a Better World

Our dedication to social change and climate protection remains part of our core mission. Instead of relying on advertising revenue, we offer a reasonably priced subscription model that allows unlimited ad-free searches. We will continue to communicate transparently about how we utilize our revenue. Even if we invest only a small portion of the subscription fee into our impact projects, it significantly exceeds what other social search engines achieve. We are unaware of any web search that generates more than 10 cents per user per month for supported projects; contracts with Google- and Microsoft-controlled advertising networks do not permit more.

At the same time, we are establishing a network of supporters through which socially responsible companies can donate directly to our GOOD projects. This has significant leverage: a donation of €1,000 can save advertising displayed on half a million pages—advertising that would otherwise be needed to generate sufficient clicks on paid ads.

Join Our Cause!

Our subscription is simple and straightforward: €2 for a monthly subscription or €1.60 per month with an annual commitment. You can choose whether you want to further support our commitment to social change and climate protection beyond the basic fee.

For organizations such as municipal administrations, schools, or companies managing multiple computers, we offer special B2B packages. Our message is clear: the time has come for organizations that should be neutral to stop financing their web searches through advertising. Now there’s GOOD—the sustainable search engine without ads

MORE ABOUT OUR MOVE

Questions, Critique, Ideas? Message us!
Andreas Renner, Co-Founder GOOD: andreas@good-search.org