- 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.
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I just tried quant, ecosia and lilo.
For something intended to enhance privacy, I think it’s problematic that 2 of those three immediately wants to set cookies. It kind of makes me suspicious that the third one did it surreptitiously, honestly.
All of them present pop-ups about ‘making the shift’.
I mean.
Like the top-down push at getting everyone to use AI, every time something tries to force a thing to happen - doesn’t that indicate it is not the best option for me? If it was, I would likely figure that out on my own?Staan - a dyslexic’s word for satan?
/s
Or the Dutch word for standing
Curious! Can someone also explain why “standing” was chosen? Is it only a native pun around “search” or something?
Staan stands for Search Trusted API Access Network. I think that it’s just your typical European „acronym which happens to be or sound like a word“ like PESCO (PErmanent Structured COoperation) or ELSTER (ELektronische STeuer ERklärung). It is really common in EU contexts.
Great, I’ve been using ecosia for a while now, let’s hope the transition is not very troubling.
PS: I believe Google is still useful whenever I have to look for a product to buy though
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”
Here’s a chocolate cake recipe: link
I’ve also found a strawberry cake recipe: link
There’s also a quick microwave mug cake recipe: link
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.
Been using Qwant for the past 8 weeks and haven’t missed google once, I actually feel I am getting much better results without the SEO spam and targeted advertising.
I tried using Qwant recently but unfortunately the Swedish language results leave a lot to be desired. Much of the result are spam domains copying content just to get hits. I hope it gets better, since I would really love a good European alternative.
It used to have a “global” option, which was the default. But they, for some fucking reason, removed that a little while ago. It has become a much worse search engine since then. No idea what they were thinking, it has gone from my default and the only one I used to me now looking for alternatives.
I’m just gonna go back to Kagi, still the best I ever used. I was just more poor than I usually am for a couple of months so couldn’t afford the monthly $10, but I’d much rather pay that for something I want to support and use a lot than using anything that takes your info and tracks you.
I would gladly pay for kagi too if they weren’t US based, but currently that’s a hard no for me. I will not use or pay for any US services anymore if there are alternatives.
Applause! I hope they continue building a global search index. I wish for a common, open, government-funded index, but an alternative, European, proprietary index is still a significant and timely improvement.
Nice. Qwant just needs to include maps again. I need that functionality a lot.
There’s Herewego.com
no there isn’t
They axed that feature and a few others that weren’t making them enough money or impressing investors.
Been needing to get off duckduckgo since it keeps doing those AI answers (don’t care if I can turn it off, would still happen on private tabs.)
Any thoughts on Qwant vs Ecosia for those like me looking to switch?
I turned both and felt the results from Ecosia weren’t as useful. I’ve been using Qwant for a few months now. Qwant also has the bonus of being one character away from Qwantz.com, one of my favourite websites.
You can disable these AI answers by using https://noai.duckduckgo.com/ as your search query. Duckduckgo allows you to save all options inside an url so that they can also persists in private tabs.
Ecosia is planting millions of trees from the money it earns from our searches. It can offset some of the harm our computer use causes. That makes it a clear winner for me.
I tried both and settled on Qwant, the only plus for ecosia was that it was available as a default choice for Safari on iOS, while Qwant was not. Since I am using Librewolf/Firefox as my main browser that didn’t really matter for me though, if you plan on using Safari it’s a huge plus for ecosia.
Are you saying Apple won’t let you choose your favorite search engine in safari?
Before we get excited may I remind who are the 2 persons behind Qwant (sorry there’s no english version of these wikipedia pages) :
https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Éric_Léandri
https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Manuel_Rozan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwant#Controversies_and_disputes
Do you think Qwant is worse than Google?
It is noteworthy that unlike proprietary solutions, EUSP’s index will be available to other independent search engines and technology companies.
- Both organizations have historically relied on Microsoft’s Bing platform – with Ecosia switching to a mix of Google and Bing search results last year.
- Headed by Qwant CEO Olivier Abecassis, European Search Perspective aims to build digital sovereignty within Europe and ensure the continent has a strong, independent alternative to existing search technologies.
- The venture will aim to improve user search experience – delivering tailored hits and a stronger search product for Europeans.
Given the EU’s appalling track record on privacy and censorship I don’t consider this an upgrade. Any competitor in this space needs to be run outside the control of any major governing body.
I don’t know what the chat control has to do with this. (And that aside, it won’t come as it didn’t in the past, although I am sure they try it again after the Denmark presidency has failed. It’s a constant fight not to become like dystopian dictatorship.)
You speak of “track record”, but link to an article about “could in the future”.
*blows raspberry*
I always found both of these search engines to be Bing skins, and a few years back there was tonnes of negative stuff written about Qwant. Anyway, I am shocked that the project reached completion.
You were right about Ecosia, it is not a search engine as stated. In the beginning I believed they used just Bing for their search, but today they use both Bing and Google, although their goal is to replace them in the future probably with a qwant partnership
i mean, i agree, but then again - every SE has had their fair share of entshittification. i switched to qwant briefly (was using startpage at the time), because startpage got some bad press. then used qwant, thought it was meh without good search results and changed back to startpage, then found out qwant had bad press too after. honestly not suprised if big tech is behind all of it to keep novice users on their platforms and doing their “research” for them.
