Newly launched in the UK, VeoSearch is tapping the enormous wealth of the web's search firms so that they give to charity each time you search.
Founded in August last year, the Paris-based site makes money through advertising and employs six people.
Co-founder Guillaume Heintz explains the idea.
Veosearch founders Guillaume Heintz and Arthur Saint-Père
• Explain your business to my Mum.
"When you want to find something, you normally go to Yahoo or Google.co.uk, right? Now you can search with veosearch.com in the same way and for every search, they give money to the charity that you choose.
• How do you make money?
"We are in partnership with the search engines so we get revenues from the traffic we drive with them. We also get money from a banner about sustainable development we have on the site."
• What's your background?
"We studied together in HEC School of Management in Paris, where we came up with the idea. Arthur has always been interested in the environment and I have worked on humanitarian schemes, so I wanted to create something that helps the not-for-profit sector."
• How many users do you have now, and what's your target within 12 months?
"We have about 45,000 registered members and more than 300.000 unique users per month. Within 12 months, we are hoping to at least have ten times that."
• Name your closest competitors.
"In the UK, everyclick is another search engine raising money for charity. They are powered by Ask.com."
• How are personalisation and recommendation part of your business?
"All charities on our site are working with us to recommend web use giving to potential users. Every user chooses which charities they want to support and the charities show the user what projects they are driving."
• What's your biggest challenge?
"It's easy to change to VeoSearch and it makes a great difference. Still, when you are used to typing in Yahoo or Google in the browser, it can be hard to change your ways."
• Are we in the middle of a new dot com bubble?
"We are in a middle of a Web 2.0 development phase where the users are the ones supplying sites with content. For VeoSearch.com, the user is at the core of our service."
• Which tech businesses or web thinkers are the ones to watch?
"Yahoo has put a lot of efforts lately into their search engine which is highly under-rated. We follow a lot of French web thinkers, but they should really start writing in English!"
• Where do you want the company to be in five years?
"We want to be the leading search engine working for sustainable development in the world. With the services we are developing, we just want charities to understand how they can benefit from the site."
It sounds noble, but it there any appetite for charity search?
Would you trust it?
And how can sites like Veosearch persuade satisfied Google users to switch their search habits?
