I look forward to more similar postings like this one. Does Your Blog have a subscription I can subscribe to for new posts?

i have been using goodtree for about a couple months now and never had an issue with them where they spammed my friends. The only way for them to get a hold of your friends’ emails is if YOU give it to them. I also received an invite ‘I give your name’. for 3 guys, who noone knows how much they make, who just started up apparently giving 50% is really kool. I know that there are issues going on with the site cause i’m a booster for them and i sometimes have issues gaining access. B patient when u email them cause it takes a while to answer.

Later y’all

I am MsDieppham so glad when I make friend with you therefore I decide to writte this letter for you My purpose used website for Business and international friendship

rgd
Mslysapham

I was flabbergasted not long after that to find out that they had stolen all of my contacts from my address book (first felony) and not only that, sent to all these contacts, supposedly in my name “via Goodtree”, spam emails also titled “I gave your name”, which I had to justify myself about to a certain number of my friends, business relations and contacts that did not really appreciate this approach, and wrote back to me to complain, each time I had to explain and justify myself for something I hadn’t done…

I wrote several times (emails through the “contact us” page) and they did not answer, to ask them how to unsubscribe, since I did not find any way to unsubscribe and erase my profile page from their website. The only button to “delete” your account set off a standard so-called “error” page saying to try again later because of temporary technical difficulties… which I strongly suspect is a total lie, they’ve got you trapped because in fact it’s conceived so you can sign in but CANNOT sign out…

So be forewarned, GoodTree is just a spammer scam!

I’m even willing to make a generic Goodsearch widget for all Google users instead of limiting it to my org. Do you have any suggestions?

I was therefore concerned to see some of the web posts questioning (albiet legitimately) whether it was a scam.

The recent response from GoodTree has allayed some of these fears and by posting this I wanted to try and provide some positve feed back on what they are trying to do.

I usually use Google and spent quite a bit of time comparing the results for different searches that I was carring out to make sure I was still getting good results. I was, at least GoodTree seemed to fit and find the kind of information I was after.

Hurry up and get the UK Tree running again please.

Hoping that I’m right,

Neil

Here are the details. You can find them again in our audited financial review, published at: http://goodtree.com/lautze/report.pdf Also in that audit, you can see that we have been developing the site on what is considered a small budget, especially for doing it in the San Francisco area: $246,366 in 2006. We have spent additional money in 2007, of course. And that amount has only been possible because everyone working on the project is taking a below market wage, and because a big legal firm named Orrick believes in us and is doing their work pro-bono. More financial information is available at http://goodtree.com/charities/financial_info . We are continuing to add to this and other sections of the site; financial transparency is a project (which will eventually become just a process), and it continues abreast of the rest of our development tasks.

As for Ooga Labs, please look carefully at the language on the official website. What it says is that we sold companies for $100 million in the past. The unfortunate fact is that venture capitalists owned a lot of it. Ooga Labs is actually about 15 people working for below market wages developing several online businesses we hope will improve the world in the areas of charity, medicine, family, local communities, and education. GoodTree is one of those ideas. We are evangelists of small, talented teams trying to solve the major challenges in the world with technology. We’re trying to do that in a sustainable and rewarding way – by trying to turn a profit at the same time. We believe it can be done.

So let me get to your great suggestion about becoming a non-profit, which I interpret to mean give away 100% of the profits. First, we already tried to address your question a little our FAQ here http://goodtree.com/about/faq#17 and here http://goodtree.com/about/faq#18 . Second, we plan to write much more about this on our GoodTree blog (forthcoming) http://blog.goodtree.com because we think it’s an important debate. Third, sadly, the fact is we don’t know if we can ever turn a profit sending 50% of gross revenue to charity. Most companies who give anything send 2% of profits (Ben & Jerry’s) or around 0.2% of gross revenues. Even in the case of Newman’s Own, where they send 100% of profits, it’s usually around 10% of gross revenues. Let’s look at our competition. If Google gave 100% of their profits, it would be approximately 34% of their gross revenue. GoodTree is committing 50%. If Yahoo gave 100% of their profits, it would be around 20% of their gross revenue. So as it would be impossible for Yahoo or Google to give 50% of gross revenue — they would go out of business — it will be hard for us, too.

But let’s assume GoodTree is able to get profitable. We are evangelists of small talented teams trying to solve the world’s major challenges with technology, while making it sustainable and rewarding by trying to turn a profit at the same time. We believe you can combine those two goals in one organization. Furthermore, we think there are many of the world’s challenges which may end up being better accomplished with this approach, and we think GoodTree is one of them. Why? It seems much more likely to us that a for- profit entity like GoodTree can hire and motivate a more talented team, build a better product, that stays more innovative (to keep its users from going back to search engines who give nothing or nearly nothing to social causes), and ultimately give more money to social causes, than a non-profit approach. The GoodTree product needs to be as good as MSN, or Google, or MyYahoo for GoodTree to make a difference. The way we see it, SearchKindly and GoodSearch and others are not GoodTree’s competition — together we have only 0.01% of the market. Google, Yahoo, MSN, Comcast have 95% of the market and they don’t give any of their revenues to charity. That’s our competition. That’s who we have to take users from. It’s not about GoodTree vs GoodSearch. It’s about GoodTree and GoodSearch and SearchKindly vs MSN, Yahoo and Google.

If GoodTree has a product that is inferior to MSN, then GoodTree will never even get 1% of the market. GoodTree has to have a product that is comparable to the big guys, and I don’t mean just the search results. We’re not a match for the big guys yet by any stretch, but to have a shot, we need the speed and talent to get us there. This is the kind of thing I’m taking about: http://goodtree.com/e It’s our customizable home search page. Right now, about 50 million people worldwide use a customized home search page like this (most on MyYahoo, some on Google/ig). In the next 4 years, we think 250 million people will have a home page like this (there are over 1 billion people on the Internet now). If GoodTree doesn’t have a great customizable home search page, with open API’s, 1000’s of widgets, integration with the social networks, etc. we will always be small and users will get hooked to Yahoo and MSN where none of the money goes to social causes. It hasn’t been easy for us to develop this technology, but it’s getting better every week, and may allow us to compete effectively. We couldn’t have done it without very talented people, who Yahoo would pay handsomely to go work in Mountain View down the highway.

I like SearchKindly since they are a non-profit. GoodTree and Good Search are simply companies trying to earn a profit off of your legitimate wish to be charitable. They keep half and send the other half, supposedly, to charity.

What I don’t like is that no where on the GoodTree website do they mention that they are backed by a $100 million company. They make it sound like they got GoodTree started on a shoe-string budget, etc. but this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Everyone is a suspect on the web until proven innocent. They should be more honest… honesty always pays off…