Search engine to donate 80% of profits to charities
Howard Lake | 4 November 2021 | News
Ask.moe is a new search engine that aims to donate 80% of its profits to charities and good causes.
The Europe-based company says that its goal “is to build useful and profitable services for which we can donate 80% of our profits to other non-profit organisations and charities with a proven track-record.”
The site uses Google’s Custom Search Engine, which is available for free in return for Google’s ads being displayed.
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It has also partnered with companies such as NordVPN and Gandi which provide affiliate links, contributing to Ask.Moe’s income. The company is also accepting donations in its start-up phase.
SEE ALSO: Dogs Trust raises over £10,000 with ClickNow search engine (26 June 2006)
After donating 80% of profits, the company states that “the remaining 20% will be put aside for a rainy day”.
Charity beneficiaries?
At launch Ask.Moe will donate to organisations and charities “such as GiveDirectly, All Hands and Hearts, etc”. It also plans to let users decide which charities and nonprofit organisations should receive donations.
In addition to offering web and image search, the company is attempting to stand out from other search engines by highlighting certain types of search such as domain names, currency conversion, a calculator, and a code search for developers.
The company also offers an API, enabling its content to be used and shared by others.
Ask.moe is also committed to user privacy, so it does highlight the fact that, by using Google’s data, Google does get to process much of the search activity. But Ask.moe itself sets out to store and process a minimal amount of personal data on its servers.
- Search engine Ecosia plants 40 million trees (31 October 2018)
- World’s first charity-powered search engine is available next week (6 September 2018)
- Ethical search engine Storm to generate funds for charities (7 August 2015)
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.