WhaleSlide, the social-good UK search engine making online shopping a charitable affair
by Startacus Admin
WhaleSlide, a privacy-conscious philanthropic search-engine, originally launched 18months ago, has re-launched with a new version of their ‘social-good’/ ‘PhilTech’ search engine. We did the charitable thing, and spread the word!
WhaleSlide is the brainchild of childhood friends, Andy Curran and Francesco Petruzzelli, who drew on their previous experience working in technology and project 
management, to build a search engine that had social-good and charitable giving at it’s core.
Originally launched 18months ago, with partners as large as Nike, Selfridges, eBay and Adidas, WhaleSlide is a privacy-conscious philanthropic search-engine enabling the general public to fundraise for amazing causes by simply switching their search-engine. Users can raise money for their favoured charity, without spending any extra time or money, whenever they make a purchase online with one of the 17,000 retail partners. WhaleSlide also provides a secure search-engine for those who value their privacy, not storing or selling on any data.
A promise of WhaleSlide is that it does not automatically store data about users – meaning information about you cannot be sold on to third parties and cannot be hacked.
Additionally, users can nominate a charity and, every time they make an online purchase with one of WhaleSlide’s growing group of partner retailers, the search engine will donate money to that charity.
Co-Founder Fran explained: ‘We know from our own research that privacy is the overriding concern of search engine users, which is why you can use WhaleSlide without any information about you being stored.
‘And WhaleSlide is just as good, if not better, than the leading search engines – it’s fast, it’s anonymous and it doesn’t filter search results based on user preferences.’
WhaleSlide’s suggests that up to 1billion pounds sterling a year could be raised for charities in Britain if its policy of donating every time an online purchase is made with a retail partner was adopted widely.
Andy went on to explain: ‘It’s so easy for charities to sign up, and WhaleSlide’s donations do not cost shoppers a penny.
‘It is literally money for nothing. Even a small charity with 50 or so supporters could raise 3,000 pounds sterling a year simply by signing up and encouraging those supporters to shop smarter.’
We wish self-starters Andy and Fran well with the launch of the new version of WhaleSlide and look forward to hearing (and searching up) more news on WhaleSlide as the social good search engine continues to hopefully grow.
If you like the idea of your Startup doing 'social-good' you might want to read the recent Startacus article on how startups can contribute positively to the world around them.
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Published on: 25th April 2017
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