Resurrecting Qwant: New Owners Bet On GenAI To Provide Answers
Excerpt:
"Frankly, in 2019, building a search engine was not affordable for Qwant and it never was," he said. "The mistake was not to explain that and try to hide it. Qwant has been focused on privacy. And the team had worked hard on a solution with Microsoft that meant it didn't share data with Microsoft."
Even now, New Qwant will need a 3rd party to help with long-tail search results. Still, the transformation at New Qwant was underway when Microsoft dropped a bomb: It was dramatically raising its search API rates. This change also hit other search engines like Ecosia that relied on Bing.
"18 months ago, Microsoft changed access to Bing's search API," he said. "They increased the price without any good reason. All of us realized that we were so dependent on Microsoft that their strategy change could kill us. We decided we should not be in the passenger side but that we should be in the driver's seat."
So Qwant and Ecosia teamed up to create a 50-50 joint venture called the European Search Perspective (EUSP). Qwant will transfer the search indexing infrastructure it was building as well as some of its engineers and data scientists. Ecosia is making a cash contribution."
https://frenchtechjournal.com/resurrection-qwant-second-life/
#Qwant #Ecosia #SearchEngine #EuropeanAlternatives
Excerpt:
"Frankly, in 2019, building a search engine was not affordable for Qwant and it never was," he said. "The mistake was not to explain that and try to hide it. Qwant has been focused on privacy. And the team had worked hard on a solution with Microsoft that meant it didn't share data with Microsoft."
Even now, New Qwant will need a 3rd party to help with long-tail search results. Still, the transformation at New Qwant was underway when Microsoft dropped a bomb: It was dramatically raising its search API rates. This change also hit other search engines like Ecosia that relied on Bing.
"18 months ago, Microsoft changed access to Bing's search API," he said. "They increased the price without any good reason. All of us realized that we were so dependent on Microsoft that their strategy change could kill us. We decided we should not be in the passenger side but that we should be in the driver's seat."
So Qwant and Ecosia teamed up to create a 50-50 joint venture called the European Search Perspective (EUSP). Qwant will transfer the search indexing infrastructure it was building as well as some of its engineers and data scientists. Ecosia is making a cash contribution."
https://frenchtechjournal.com/resurrection-qwant-second-life/
#Qwant #Ecosia #SearchEngine #EuropeanAlternatives
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