The Google logo is displayed on the smartphone screen and the European flag is displayed on the computer screen.
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Lisbon, Portugal — Ecosia and Qwant, two competing search engines GoogleA partnership was announced on Tuesday to build a European search index and reduce reliance on big U.S. tech companies.
The two online search companies have agreed to form a joint venture called “European Search Perspective” or “EUSP”, with ownership split 50-50 between the two companies. The joint venture is scheduled to launch in France in early 2025 and aims to provide “improved” French and German search results.
Ecosia is headquartered in Berlin, while Qwant is headquartered in Paris. Qwant is a privacy-focused search engine that promises not to track users or resell their personal data. Ecosia’s search engine is focused on sustainability, promising to plant a tree for every 50 searches on its platform.
Search infrastructure is what powers our access to the web, but it is currently largely controlled by Google, the dominant search engine with over 90% of the global market. Even alternative search engines, such as Ecosia and Qwant, must rely on existing technology from companies like Microsoft to deliver search results.
Ecosia CEO Christian Kroll told CNBC that the plan was possible in part because of the EU’s new technology-focused competition rules. The Digital Markets Act, which took effect earlier this year, requires large tech companies, known as “gatekeepers,” to provide fair and reasonable access to platforms.
In the case of Google, the DMA requires the company to share data useful in training search models.
Why build a European search index?
Currently, alternative search engines such as Ecosia, Qwant, and DuckDuckGo have not developed their own backend infrastructure. However, new businesses will build their own search indexes from scratch, gathering results from different search engines. ecological economy last year Switch to a mix of Google and Bing Search results.
Ecosia and Qwant say their new search index will be “privacy first,” using technology that Qwant will redesign in 2023. .
The launch comes as alternative search providers like Ecosia and Qwant are forced to contend with Microsoft’s higher prices for access to its Bing Search API (application programming interface), which allows developers to access the tech giant’s back-end search infrastructure. .
Qwant CEO Olivier Abecassis told CNBC: “We are a European company and we need to develop technology to ensure that third-party decisions, such as Microsoft’s decision to increase the cost of accessing its search API, do not jeopardize our business.
“This is not about the United States or American companies. This is all about the sovereignty of our businesses and our companies,” he added. Abekasis will also serve as CEO of the new company, which has yet to raise funds from outside investors.
Kroll said in an interview ahead of last week’s launch that Europeans were “very dependent on American technology.” He added that the election of Donald Trump as US president could increase geopolitical tensions, which could pose problems for Europe’s dependence on US technology.
He noted that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine cut off natural gas supplies to Europe, causing disruptions to Europe’s energy supplies, and said this should serve as a warning of what can happen when an entire continent becomes overly reliant on a single country for critical resources.
A “paradigm shift” in artificial intelligence search
Ecosia and Qwant said part of their push to build a search engine from the ground up was to provide a “transparent and secure data pool” for new artificial intelligence technology.
Ecosia’s Kroll told CNBC that search providers may be “more constrained” in the future given the shift toward generative artificial intelligence.
“They know they’re having very important resources to enable this paradigm shift,” he said. “Yes, you need large language models to have good chatbots. But you also need access to good indexes.”
The rise of OpenAI’s ChatGPT is putting pressure on existing search giant Google as people increasingly turn to viral chatbots to search for information.
At the same time, a series of new search engines, such as Perplexity, have entered the market, offering their own alternatives to Google based on generative artificial intelligence.
Google has fought back with its own generative AI search product, integrating its Gemini large language model into search results.
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