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].
What do you mean by unranked? Because it doesn’t maintain its own database, just proxies other search engines and aggregates them
Furthermore, priv.au seems to include only Google in its default search engines so its really just Google through a proxy. Good for privacy but doesn’t really help you get away from big tech