I think there is a problem in how we are using the word 'ineffective'. I think you are using the word to mean 'very small absolute amounts' whereas I am using the word to mean something like 'low opportunity cost : return ratio'. I think looking at the cost : return ratio is fairer, and I also think 'very small absolute amount' is misleading.
I did 46 searches on my work computer yesterday, and probably a handful more on mobile devices. Say 50 for the sake of argument, or $0.50. Over a year this is $130 dollars if I make no searches at weekends. I agree with katydee that it would probably take about ten minutes to configure my search settings, so I am better advised to spend ten minutes configuring my search settings than work a marginal ten minutes and donating the procedes so long as my salary is less than about $800 an hour. Based on the 2013 LessWrong Survey, around 1500 LessWrong users have a salary of less than $800 an hour, so if they all configured their internet settings in that way they would raise about $200,000 for a charity of their choice. I can't find an official budget for MIRI, but I'd estimate that it is somewhere between $0.5m and $1m per year, so that's a pretty meaningful amount.
Another interpretation of your argument is that it is inefficient to do needless searches on GoodSearch to earn money for charity. This is a good argument; if it takes (say) five seconds to do a search then you are better off working a marginal hour as long as your salary is above $7.20 per hour. But I don't think anyone is actually arguing that - the idea is just to monetise searches you would be making anyway, since recapturing a small (non-zero) fraction of your personal contribution to advertising is strictly better than recapturing a zero-size contribution to your personal contribution to advertising.
I am using it in the context of a rate of return on effort. So are you, though I'd politely describe your definition as "bespoke".
The way both you and the OP are evaluating the decision is not how you do cost-benefit analysis. If you treat the ten minute setup time as the only input, and project arbitrarily into the future by discounting inputs you're already doing, you can value that ten minutes to ludicrous levels which you clearly shouldn't be reasoning with. The OP in fact does this by observing that after two years of GoodSearching, they wil...
Followup to: Use Search Engines Early and Often
Last year, I posted about using search engines and particularly recommended GoodSearch, a site that donates one cent to a charity of your choice whenever you make a (Bing-powered) search via their site.
At the time, some seemed skeptical of this recommendation, and my post was actually downvoted-- people thought that I was plugging GoodSearch too hard without enough evidence for its quality. I now want to return to the topic with a more detailed report on my experience using GoodSearch for a year and how that has worked out for me.
What is GoodSearch?
GoodSearch is a site that donates one cent to a charity of your choice whenever you make a search using their (Bing-powered) service. You can set this search to operate in your browser just like any other.
GoodSearch for Charity
During a year of using GoodSearch, I raised $103.00 for MIRI through making searches. This number is not particularly huge in itself, but it is meaningful because this was basically "free money"-- money gained in exchange for doing things that I was already doing. In exchange for spending ~10 minutes reconfiguring my default searches and occasionally logging in to GoodSearch, I made 103 dollars for MIRI-- approximately $600/hour. As my current earning potential is less than $600/hour, I consider adopting GoodSearch a highly efficient method of donating to charity, at least for me.
It is possible that you make many fewer searches than I do, and thus that setting up GoodSearch will not be very effective for you at raising money. Indeed, I think this is at least somewhat likely, as last time I checked owever, there are two mitigating factors here:
First, you don't have to make all that many searches for GoodSearch to be a good idea. If you make a tenth of the searches I do in a year, you would still be earning around $60/hour for charity by configuring GoodSearch for ten minutes.
Second, I anticipate that, having created a GoodSearch account and configured my default settings to use GoodSearch, I have accomplished the bulk of this task, and that next year I will spend significantly less time setting up GoodSearch-- perhaps half that, if not less. This means that my projected returns on using GoodSearch next year are $1200/hour! If this holds true for you as well, even if setting up GoodSearch is marginal now, it could well be worth it later.
It is also of course possible that you will make many more searches than I do, and thus that setting up GoodSearch will be even more effective for you than it is for me. I think this is somewhat unlikely, as I consider myself rather good at using search engines and quick to use them to resolve problems, but I would love to be proven wrong.
GoodSearch for Personal Effectiveness
Perhaps more importantly, though, I found that using GoodSearch was a very effective way of getting me to search more often. I had previously identified not using search engines as often as I could as a weakness that was causing me to handle some matters inefficiently. In general, there are many situations where the value of information that can be obtained by using search engines is high, but one may not be inclined to search immediately.
For me, using GoodSearch solved this problem; while a single cent to MIRI for each search doesn't seem like much, it was enough to give me a little ping of happiness every time I searched for anything, which in turn was enough to reinforce my searching habit and take things to the next level. GoodSearch essentially created a success spiral that led to me using both search engines and the Internet itself much more effectively.
Disavantages of GoodSearch
GoodSearch has one notable disadvantage-- it is powered by Bing rather than by Google search. When I first tried GoodSearch, I expected search quality to be much worse. In practice, though, I found that my fears were overblown. GoodSearch results were completely fine in almost all cases, and in the few situations where it proved insufficient, I could easily retry a search in Google-- though often Google too lacked the information I was looking for.
Summary/tl;dr
After a year of using GoodSearch, I found it to be both an effective way to earn money for charity and an effective way to motivate myself to use search engines more often. I suggest that other users try using GoodSearch and seeing if it has similarly positive effects; the costs of trying this are very low and the potential upside is high.