Ecosia and Qwant, Two European Search Engines, Join Forces on an Index To Shrink Reliance on Big Tech (techcrunch.com) 9
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 other climate-focused initiatives, are joining forces on a joint venture to develop their own European search index. TechCrunch: The pair hopes this move will help drive innovation in their respective search engines -- including and especially around generative AI -- as well as reducing dependence on search indexes provided by tech giants Microsoft (Bing) and Google. Both currently rely on Bing's search APIs while Ecosia also uses Google's search results. Rising API costs are one clear motivator for the move to shrink this Big Tech dependency, with Microsoft massively hiking prices for Bing's search APIs last year.
Neither Ecosia nor Qwant will stop using Bing or Google altogether. However, they aim to diversify the core tech supporting their services with their own index. It will lower their operational costs, and serve as a technical base to fuel their own product development as GenAI technologies take up a more central role in many consumer-facing digital services. Both search engines have already dabbled in integrating GenAI features. Expect more on this front, although they aren't planning to develop AI model development themselves. They say they will continue to rely on API access to major platforms' large language models (LLMs) to power these additions. The pair is also open to other European firms joining in with their push for more tech stack sovereignty -- at least as fellow customers for the search index, as they plan to license access via an API. Other forms of partnership could be considered too, they told TechCrunch.
Neither Ecosia nor Qwant will stop using Bing or Google altogether. However, they aim to diversify the core tech supporting their services with their own index. It will lower their operational costs, and serve as a technical base to fuel their own product development as GenAI technologies take up a more central role in many consumer-facing digital services. Both search engines have already dabbled in integrating GenAI features. Expect more on this front, although they aren't planning to develop AI model development themselves. They say they will continue to rely on API access to major platforms' large language models (LLMs) to power these additions. The pair is also open to other European firms joining in with their push for more tech stack sovereignty -- at least as fellow customers for the search index, as they plan to license access via an API. Other forms of partnership could be considered too, they told TechCrunch.
This can't work in Europe (Score:5, Interesting)
They have no free speech laws to protect a search engine from harsh regulation/censorship.
A truly open system has to be completely decentralized to protect itself from the authoritarians
Re: (Score:2)
- Council of Europe (46 member states): European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR, Article 10 [wikisource.org]) signed on 4 November 1950, enforced by the European Court of Human Rights;
- European Union (27 member states): Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (Article 11 [wikisource.org]), enforced by the European Court of Justice, and legally binding since 1 December 2009 (by the Treaty of Lisbon) for the governments of the member states and for the institutions of the EU;
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Re: (Score:2)
Yawn! (Score:1)