Ecosia and Qwant, two European search engines, join forces on an index to shrink reliance on Big Tech | TechCrunch
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Qwant, France's privacy-focused search engine, and Ecosia, a Berlin-based not-for-profit search engine that uses ad revenue to fund tree planting and

Ecosia, the tree-planting search engine from Berlin, and Qwant, France’s privacy-focused search provider, announced a joint venture in November 2024 to develop their own European search index[1][2]. The partnership aims to reduce their dependence on Microsoft’s Bing APIs, which both companies currently rely on for search results[2:1].

The new venture, called European Search Perspective (EUP), is structured as a 50-50 ownership split between Ecosia and Qwant[2:2]. Qwant’s engineering team and existing search index development will transfer to EUP, with Qwant CEO Olivier Abecassis leading the joint venture[2:3].

“The door is open and we are ready to talk to anyone,” said Abecassis, while noting they want to “move as fast as possible” with their existing shareholders’ support[2:4]. The index will begin serving France-based search traffic for both engines by Q1 2025, expanding to cover “a significant portion” of German traffic by end of 2025[2:5].

Rising API costs are a key motivator, following Microsoft’s massive price hike for Bing’s search APIs in 2023[2:6]. However, neither company plans to completely stop using Bing or Google, instead aiming to diversify their technical foundation as generative AI takes a more central role in search[2:7].

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      • Vupware@lemmy.zip
        2·
        20 days ago

        Woah, this is cool.

        To me, it looks like it basically anonymizes your search through a search engine of your choice.

        Meaning, you can still use google for a search if you choose, but the data they would usually collect is out of reach.

        Am I understanding this correctly?

        • Zetta@mander.xyz
          1·
          20 days ago

          You are correct, it is just a privacy respecting meta search engine! I self host my own instance, another thing to love.

    • milk@discuss.tchncs.de
      10·
      20 days ago

      What do you mean by unranked? Because it doesn’t maintain its own database, just proxies other search engines and aggregates them

    • ThirdConsul@lemmy.ml
      2·
      20 days ago

      Cool cool cool.

      My go to test is to search for water shoes / swimming shoes that are either size EU 48 or extra wide.

      This shiet can’t even find only “water shoes”, instead recommending shoes to me.

      Seems to be useless trash-proxy to Bing and Google?