History

It was 2007 when Christian Kroll set off on a trip around the world.

The first leg of his travels led him to Nepal in an adventure that would span five months and see the founding of Xabbel, a charitable search engine Christian developed to generate donations for local Nepalese causes. Though the project thrived at first, power and other resource shortages prevented the project from surviving long-term.

But Christian’s journey wouldn’t stop there. Soon, he found himself traversing the many contrasting landscapes of South America. It became a formative period for his ecological and technological ambitions: between personal encounters with rainforests and a read of Thomas Friedman’s Hot, Flat and Crowded, Christian was inspired to try his search engine luck again. This time though, the focus would be the environment.

Christian’s first ecologically-driven search engine, Forestle, launched in August 2008. The fledgling project grew rapidly with Google as its index and ad partner – but the search giant backed out as donation sums went up, and Christian was forced to seek a replacement service. Yahoo Germany signed on immediately – although it soon became clear that with more than 100,000 users and more on the way, Forestle would have the potential to go international.

After nine months in Buenos Aires, Christian returned to Germany and started work on the next big step. It was December 7, 2009 when he and a group of freelancers launched a new project powered jointly by Bing and Yahoo. This latest instalment of sustainable search would be called Ecosia – and with its commitment to core social business principles, it would represent the culmination of two years of trial, error and discovery.