A new search engine may be able to deliver real-world results by providing meals to schools in the developing world. Hoongle.org, a custom Google search engine, promises to donate 20 grains of rice per search.
This is along the same lines as GoodSearch.org, powered by Yahoo!, which donates to a charity of your choice each time you search. Launched in 2005, they are now partnered with over 78,000 nonprofit organizations and have raised thousands of dollars for a variety of charities. In some cases, tens of thousands of dollars.
Since Hoongle.org rolled out in September, the site has generated more than 8.5 million grains of rice, or the equivalent of 4,000 meals from their 90,000 users in 130 countries,. The search engine works through Fill the Cup, a campaign of the United National World Food Program that delivers food to schools around the world.
Vladimir Hruda, David Whitehead and Salmaan Ayaz are undergraduate students at the University of Richmond. Hruda, the mathematics economics major who first came up with this new way to to carry out social change through technology enlisted his friends and Hoongle – a combination of the words “hunger” and “Google” — was born. “Typically charity requires donation,” Ayaz told the New York Times. “But [t]here’s no cost to us, or anyone, for doing this.”
Hoongle.org’s strategy is similar to that of FreeRice.com, a simple vocabulary game where each correct answer donates 10 grains of rice to developing countries. Close to 63 billion grains of rice have been donated to developing countries via the UNWFP, but the novelty of Hoongle.org is less likely to wear off. Set Hoongle as your default home page, search engine or both, and feed the world with internet speed.
Tags: Internet Speed, Search Engine