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].
Woah, this is cool.
To me, it looks like it basically anonymizes your search through a search engine of your choice.
Meaning, you can still use google for a search if you choose, but the data they would usually collect is out of reach.
Am I understanding this correctly?
You are correct, it is just a privacy respecting meta search engine! I self host my own instance, another thing to love.