Searching on Google
In most countries of the world, Google absolutely dominates the Internet search engine market. The exceptions are mainly China and Russia. Ambitions to ease this dependence on the US tech giant are two European alternative search engines that have newly joined forces to build a European search index from scratch.
They emphasize privacy and sustainability
Germany’s Ecosia, based in Berlin, and France’s Qwant, headquartered in Paris, have agreed on a joint venture called the European Search Perspective (EUSP). Both companies will have exactly half a stake in the company, which is due to start operations in France at the beginning of 2025. It aims to provide “more precise” search results in French and German. There is no mention of support for other European languages.
At the same time, both search engines are marking a different way in which they want to differentiate themselves from the established competition. Qwant takes privacy seriously and promises users that it will not track or sell their data. In contrast, Ecosia, as its name suggests, focuses on sustainability. It publicly declares that for every 50 searches through its platform, it plants one tree.
Ecosia and Qwant will each hold half of the joint venture | photo: own
The technology will be shared
Access to the web is provided by the search infrastructure, which is currently largely controlled by Google, with more than 90% of the world market share. Even alternative search engines, such as Ecosia and Qwant, have to use the technology of other companies for searching, such as, in addition to Google, for example Microsoft.
However, the new joint venture will allow them to build their own search index from the ground up, aggregating results from various search engines. It will be built with privacy as a priority and will use technologies from Qwant that were redesigned in 2023. Both companies will not only use this index for their search engines, but will also make it available to other independent search engines and technology companies.
Olivier Abecassis, CEO of Qwant, to CNBC statedthat as European firms they need to build technology to ensure that third-party decisions, such as Microsoft’s API price hikes, do not jeopardize their business. According to Christian Kroll, head of Ecosia, Europe is still very dependent on American technology, which can be problematic. He warned that over-reliance on one source, as demonstrated by the curtailment of gas supplies to Europe following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, could pose a significant risk to the continent.
Source: mobilizujeme.cz
