A new eco-friendly search engine has been launched - supported by Yahoo and Bing - which should see approximately two sq ms of rainforest saved every time a search is conducted.

Ecosia was officially opened on December 7th, alongside the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, but had a soft launch on December 3rd.

Internet marketing consultants and brands that are concerned with being green may like to promote themselves on the site, as at least 80 per cent of its income from sponsored links will be donated to the World Wildlife Fund's rainforest protection programme.

The company's servers are to be run using green electricity and, as of December 8th, users of the search engine had conducted 343,007 searches.

This saved a total of 745,725 sq yds of rainforest and Yahoo and Bing are providing search results on the service, as well as supplying it with links so as to engender advertising revenue.

However, the chief operations officer for Greenlight, Andreas Pouros, remarked that Ecosia "isn't a search engine, but rather a re-skinned version of Bing and Yahoo".

He went on to note that, as someone interested in helping the environment, he is more interested in the environmental activities of bigger industry players as "niche" companies might have a smaller impact.

To see how this search engine operates watch the video at http://www.ecosia.org/how.php