this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2025
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TIL German search engine Ecosia and French search engine Qwant have started teaming up since last year to build a European search index (betterweb.qwant.com)
submitted 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) by oce@jlai.lu to c/buyeuropean@feddit.uk
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Historically, they have both been relying mostly on the Bing index, with Qwant building its own index for a while and serving a mix.

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[–] atro_city@fedia.io 5 points 8 hours ago

I hope it'll be opensource...

[–] petrescatraian@libranet.de 3 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

@oce There's also @Mojeek which already has it!

[–] oce@jlai.lu 1 points 5 hours ago

UK based, interesting, first time I hear about it. How good is it? Maybe they could make a trio.

[–] ByteJunk@lemmy.world 6 points 9 hours ago

I hope the engine isn't called "eusp", but other than that, really excited for this!

[–] Jackhammer_Joe@lemmy.world 5 points 9 hours ago

That's really gEUd to hear! I'll give it a try

[–] Lazycog@sopuli.xyz 45 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

I've been carefully optimistic about this - even if ecosia and qwant decide to start heavily serve ads it still means we have an alternative which will supplement privacy focused frontends and metasearch engines.

[–] jlow@beehaw.org 7 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

Just be aware that fasch media company Axel Springer owns 20% of Qwant ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwant)

[–] kungfuratte@feddit.org 4 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Also at least one of the original founders is a dubious character. He's left Qwant in 2020 though.

https://netzpolitik.org/2022/digitale-raeuberpistole-der-absturz-der-suchmaschine-qwant-und-ihres-gruenders/ (sorry, only found a German source quickly, you may have to use a translator to read it).

[–] notastatist@feddit.org 2 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

"Gleichzeitig soll das Unternehmen geplant haben, Staatstrojaner und Drohnen autoritären afrikanischen Regierungen in Zusammenarbeit mit Waffenhändlern aus Polen und dem Nahen Osten anzubieten." From the Text.

"At the same time, the company is said to have planned to offer state Trojans and drones to authoritarian African governments in cooperation with arms dealers from Poland and the Middle East"

This part is from Qwands owner his second business, whis is more like spyware. This is hard.

[–] Lazycog@sopuli.xyz 2 points 7 hours ago

Damnit. Hope the share doesn't grow any more than that atleast.

[–] jol@discuss.tchncs.de 22 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Both already mostly relied mostly on ads before this partnership. Nothing changed. But perhaps they will need less ads if running their own search index is cheaper than using Bing's.

[–] Lazycog@sopuli.xyz 8 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Would love this. Hopefully Qwant and Ecosia can make it happen soon.

[–] jol@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 14 hours ago

Either way, I use ecosia without as blockers because I want this to happen asap.

[–] ReasonableHat@lemmy.world 17 points 14 hours ago

Read about this the other day - a great collab!

[–] ObviouslyNotBanana@lemmy.world 9 points 15 hours ago

Nice. I'll keep an eye on this!