ÌÇÐÄÆƽâ°æ

As of February 2025, several search terms were googled especially actively by German internet users. Among these, the leading three were ‘handball wm’ (handball championship), ‘australian open 2025’ and ‘handball wm 2025’. The terms reflect events, certain dates and ensuing media coverage taking place at the time, in this case about the handball championship and the Australian Open tennis tournament.

Always searching

Daily life seems unthinkable without using an online search engine, whether for longer research or quickly checking something, or even just to avoid setting bookmarks, typing in URLs. Google has by far the highest share among online search engines used on desktop and mobile devices at almost 90 percent of searches done on Google, followed by Bing and Ecosia. While DuckDuckGo was further down on the list, its market share has been rising in Germany. Google may still have a substantial head start compared to its competitors, but users are increasingly apprehensive about data privacy and protection in connection with how the online search giant uses and stores personal information, as well as tracks search queries.

Searching for Trees

Ecosia is an environmentally friendly search engine with a unique business model that sets it apart from other search engines. It uses the revenue from search ads to plant trees worldwide and support reforestation projects. Every time a user performs a search on Ecosia, they indirectly contribute to reforestation, as one tree is planted for every 45 searches.The search engine market share held by Ecosia has been growing in recent years, especially in Germany where the company is based, and in other countries in Europe. Ecosia, similarly to other alternative search engines (e.g. DuckDuckGo), uses Bing to power its results.