That’s a fair point, “misleading” might’ve been a poor choice of words, but - one of the points on their page reads
“Our solar panels produce enough energy to power your searches twice over, meaning more renewables (and fewer fossil fuels) in the energy grid.”
So fair enough, they’re offsetting enough to power the connection from their users to Google/MS; I just thought this quote (and their home page in general) glossed over their reliance on those 3rd parties to “do the dirty work”, so to speak.
I share your optimism. I’d love to see Ecosia + Qwant (or whoever, really) succeed.