Ecosia and Qwant, two European search engines, join forces on an index to shrink reliance on Big Tech | TechCrunch
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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

Ecosia, the tree-planting search engine from Berlin, and Qwant, France’s privacy-focused search provider, announced a joint venture in November 2024 to develop their own European search index[1][2]. The partnership aims to reduce their dependence on Microsoft’s Bing APIs, which both companies currently rely on for search results[2:1].

The new venture, called European Search Perspective (EUP), is structured as a 50-50 ownership split between Ecosia and Qwant[2:2]. Qwant’s engineering team and existing search index development will transfer to EUP, with Qwant CEO Olivier Abecassis leading the joint venture[2:3].

“The door is open and we are ready to talk to anyone,” said Abecassis, while noting they want to “move as fast as possible” with their existing shareholders’ support[2:4]. The index will begin serving France-based search traffic for both engines by Q1 2025, expanding to cover “a significant portion” of German traffic by end of 2025[2:5].

Rising API costs are a key motivator, following Microsoft’s massive price hike for Bing’s search APIs in 2023[2:6]. However, neither company plans to completely stop using Bing or Google, instead aiming to diversify their technical foundation as generative AI takes a more central role in search[2:7].

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  • deadcatbounce@reddthat.com
    23·
    1 day ago

    It’s late in the day. Perplexity Set itself up as a search engine with AI. Don’t know whose index they use.

    I rarely use a search engine anymore directly. I used to use Startpage which is/was a proxy for Google. And everybody knows how useful Google’s results are these days.

    So I use Perplexity for search.

    • OminousOrange@lemmy.ca
      15·
      1 day ago

      Since we’re on c/privacy; from perplexity itself:

      What Does Perplexity Do With User Information?

      Perplexity:

      Collects: Search history, queries, device and location data, browsing activity, and navigational behavior (especially via its new AI-powered browser).

      Uses: These data points help personalize results, train their models, improve functionality, and—crucially—build detailed user profiles for targeted ads and marketing.

      Potential Risks: Privacy experts warn this data collection may turn users into marketing profiles, similar to surveillance practices seen in other big tech companies. Even actions outside the Perplexity app (via their browser) may be tracked and leveraged.

      Transparency and Privacy: Perplexity does not offer strong privacy protections (like end-to-end encryption), and isn’t fully transparent about how all user information is used. Cookies, device fingerprinting, and web beacons may track even non-logged-in users.

      Enterprise risks: Businesses using Perplexity’s enterprise tools must be cautious about uploading sensitive data, as it could be used for model training and not always protected from leaks.

        • OminousOrange@lemmy.ca
          5·
          1 day ago

          No need to apologize, but it’s good to be aware of the policies of various applications you use and promote.

          I use perplexity occasionally myself, aware of the above, so I only do more general searches with it.

          I have a self-hosted Perplexica instance I use for anything more sensitive.

          • deadcatbounce@reddthat.com
            2·
            4 hours ago

            There was a need to apologise; I was very wrong in context. So there! 😜 (I don’t see the point in maintaining a position which is entirely shown to be fatally flawed.)

            Thank-you for pointing to Perplexica. When I subscribed (for a year), Perplexity - unlike ChatGPT -was alone in giving references so I could avoid citing rubbish by checking unless I knew them; now they all cite. I won’t be resubscribing and to have you refer this is really helpful. 😁

            Thank-you.

      • Zerush@lemmy.mlOP
        2·
        1 day ago

        Andisearch privacy policy:

        Protecting Privacy We promise not to share your data with anyone else.

        We only collect and retain sufficient data to help our customers use the service effectively, when they want to create an account or be remembered between devices and sessions, and to improve the service we provide.

        No data is shared with any other person or company, and personal information is not available to our team members beyond that directly required for customer support and service.

        What we do to try to protect you There is a limit to what we can do while still providing links to external websites and displaying content. But while you’re searching, we do our best to try to shield our users from the worst intrusive aspects of the Web.

        We don’t store any cookies.

        We block Google’s FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts) tracking technology from this app.

        We don’t log or store your IP address. It’s used to lookup your approximate location (nearest town) for location searches only, then discarded. It is never passed to third-parties.

        We only use your GPS or detailed location for searches with your express permission, and then only to approximate the area. Your GPS location details are not stored or passed to any third-parties.

        Searches are anonymous and private to you. We don’t log searches.

        We only use analytics within our service to improve it for our users.

        We block referrers on external links and use “nofollow noopener noreferrer” to protect you.

        We do not share any customer data with any third parties.

        We collect only the data needed to provide the service.

        We don’t use any off-site or third-party user tracking. There is no ad tracking such as Facebook’s or analytics platforms like Google Analytics.

        No advertising display or advertising tracking.

        We use randomized proxies to retrieve content for preview and reader mode.

        We use https encryption everywhere including for external links wherever available.

        We proxy images and try to strip third-party cookies from any reader content as much as possible.

        We display embedded videos and content for our customer’s convenience (so you can play a YouTube video in chat), but they are in a sandbox to help protect you, and restricted to only major reputable web services (like YouTube or Spotify). An embedded video might have cookies outside of our control.

        https://andisearch.com/privacy/