The launch of Ecocho reignites my carbon footprint guilt, in a way only an ethical search engine can. There have been a few of these types of things, where your forsaking of Google meant good deeds were done, but this is the first that deals with the environment.
Two trees are planted for every 1,000 searches made, albeit they're planted in Australia. Still, the company is planning on sharing the tree planting love with other countries in the future. For now, I don't begrudge our Antipodean friends a bit of clean air. Just because they've got the weather, the beaches, Neighbours and a constant stream of bar-b-qued food, why should I be bitter...
The engine itself is powered by Google and Yahoo, so has enough power behind it to work properly. From a quick play, it's perfectly usable. Sightly slower than Google and Yahoo direct, and you might miss the extra features like 'images' and 'news', but what cost for saving the world?
Try it out here, and for more eco-news, check out Hippyshopper
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These "good deed" search engines are great, but I'm not sure that they're going to save the planet. Maybe they should all work together to launch a single search engine that helps all kind of things.