14 DAY TRIAL // The tally has come in on the Google Chrome charity initiative of last week. In total, users 'donated' over 60 million tabs which were rather equally distributed among the five charities involved with the program. Google will now divide the $1 million it has pledged according to the people's choices.
"In 2010, the Chrome community has joined us in moments of fun, invention, exploration, and now, giving. Last week, we invited Chrome’s users worldwide to 'donate' their opened tabs in Chrome to drive a charitable gift of one million dollars," Sarah Nahm, Product Marketing Manager at Google, wrote.
"We on the Chrome team were deeply impressed with the support and participation and now we’re happy to share the results with you. The Chrome community responded with staggering enthusiasm and, acting together, raised 60,599,541 tabs for charity," she announced.
This wasn't exactly a competition, but most people opted to donate their tabs, 16 million in total, for vaccinations. As such, $267,336 will go towards combating meningitis with vaccinations in Africa.
Quite a lot of people want a greener planet and opted to divert funds to re-planting trees for the endangered Atlantic Forest. 14.8 million tabs were contributed, which adds up to $245,278, meaning just as many trees planted.
Charity:water got almost as many, a little over 14 million tabs, which will go towards building clean water supplies for 11,640 people, with the $232,791 Google will donate.
A further 8.6 million tabs were delegated towards providing books to schools and libraries in Africa and Asia, the $142,518 will buy just as many books. Finally, 6.8 million tabs went towards building shelter in Latin America.
Google asked users to install the Chrome for a Cause extension last week. For several days, the extension monitored how many tabs users accessed and at the end of that period, they were able to 'donate' their tabs to the charity of their choosing.