- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.zip
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.zip
European search engines Qwant and Ecosia said on Wednesday that they have both started serving search queries through an index they developed together, Staan, which aims to be a cheaper, more privacy-focused alternative to Google and Bing.
Last year, French privacy-focused search engine Qwant struck a joint venture with German non-profit search engine Ecosia, to develop a European search index. Called European Search Perspective (EUSP), the JV now aims to serve around 50% of French queries and 33% of German queries by the end of the year.
Qwant said it is using the new index to power some of its features, like AI summaries for search, and Ecosia has plans to add some AI features soon to its platform, too.
EUSP is also in talks with companies to spur the adoption of its index for enabling search within apps. Notably, it is targeting chatbots, presenting Staan as a cheaper alternative to Google and Bing.
“If you’re using ChatGPT or any other AI chatbot, they all do knowledge grounding with web search […] our index can power deep research and AI summary features. Google and Bing’s solutions are also pricey, and our index can offer power search features at a tenth of the cost,” Christian Kroll, CEO of Ecosia, told TechCrunch.
EUSP, like Proton, is pushing to develop a European tech stack that doesn’t rely on technology from the U.S. or China.
“The timing could not be more urgent. The outcome of the 2024 U.S. election has reminded European policymakers and innovators just how exposed Europe remains when it comes to core digital infrastructure. Much of Europe’s search, cloud, and AI layers are built on American Big Tech stacks, putting entire sectors – from journalism to climate tech – at the mercy of political or commercial agendas,” the companies said in a statement.
Kroll added that through this index, combined with European privacy laws, EUSP can offer a more privacy-friendly search solution as compared to its U.S. counterparts.
I was hopeful for this when I heard that Ecosia and Qwant were working together to reduce reliance on Microsoft and Google, but a search engine “designed specifically for LLMs and generative AI agents” was not what I was hoping for.
Personally, I wouldn’t mind AI on a search engine if, instead of trying to give the answer to a query, it instead sifted through results and offered relevant ones to the user, as links to the source. Like, “Here’s what I found”,
“Cake recipes”
Perplexity.ai works like that.
And I believe ChatGPT as well when using the paid version.
the few times I gave Perplexity a go, it made all kinds of shit up, and then provided links as sources that in no way backed the hallucinated bullshit. my favourite was when it claimed that a poet and translator of certain nationality translated poems of another poet from the same country, to the language they both spoke and wrote in. trying to make it clarify how that would work just made it contradict its own contradictions.
That’s basically what google felt like until recently. I don’t need the thing to address me or anything, it just has to filter out the algorithm optimized bullshit.
Same, I want a search engine without LLM. If I want to use an LLM I’ll go use one - no need to force it on me everywhere.
But this isn’t forcing it on you… as clearly said in the comment you replied to and very clearly said on the page itself, and the URL literally being “Staan.ai”. It couldn’t be any clearer, nothing is forced on you here. Nowhere did they say or hint at this being anything else. So I have no idea why you’re saying this.
And both Qwant and Ecosia are search engines without AI. This is a new project by them focused on exactly what it says, and that doesn’t affect the original search engines.
So your comment is so fucking dumb it’s not even funny.
It’s seriously like walking up to three doors, two of which say “safe passage for pedestrians” and the third saying “DANGER! You WILL get bitten by snakes if you go through this door, it was specifically put here for that purpose.” In big red letters and warning lights everywhere around it. And another sign saying the other two doors are unaffected by the third door, they’re still as advertised. You, only wanting safe passage still walk through the third door and get mad about being bitten by snakes then go to complain about having that forced onto you.
They literally call it a search index. That is something else. The title indicates it’s something else. The article starts by indicating it’s something else.