Two European search engines build the Google rival
Search engines Ecosia and Qwant have announced plans to create a joint venture called European Search Perspective (EUSP), based in Paris. The goal is to reduce dependence on Google and Bing and better tailor search results to the companies’ missions and the preferences of Europeans. “We could downgrade results from unethical or unsustainable companies and rank good companies higher,” says Christian Kroll, founder of Ecosia.
Ownership of EUSP is split evenly between Ecosia and Qwant, with Ecosia contributing money and data while Qwant provides the labor. The technical infrastructure is provided by OVHcloud, which shares ownership with Qwant. Ecosia has a search engine market share of about 1 percent in France and Germany and claims to have about 20 million users worldwide, while Qwant reports about 6 million users.
Company open to investors and licensing
To conquer more of the world beyond French and German-speaking users, Ecosia and Qwant must be successful at home and increase revenue, which comes mainly from advertising. The challenge is obvious: Ecosia says its revenue fell by 8 percent to 24.2 million euros in the first nine months of this year compared to the same period last year.
The companies are open to both raising external capital for EUSP and licensing their index to other companies, including those who want to use the data to train AI systems. “We are bringing together the most experienced search engine developers to build sovereign technology in Europe – especially for the French and German languages. We are confident that this will be attractive to the investor community,” says Kroll.
