5mo ago

Qwant and Ecosia debut Staan, a European search index that aims to take on Big Tech

techcrunch.com Qwant and Ecosia debut Staan, a European search index that aims to take on Big Tech | TechCrunch

European search engines Qwant and Ecosia said on Wednesday that they have both started serving search queries through an index they developed together, Staan, that aims to be a cheaper, more privacy-focused alternative to Google and Bing.

Ecosia @mander.xyz

techcrunch.com /2025/08/06/qwant-and-ecosia-debut-staan-a-european-search-index-that-aims-to-take-on-big-tech/

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While I'm glad to see Qwant and Ecosia's progress, I have to say a search index "designed specifically for LLMs and generative AI agents" was not quite what I was hoping for when I saw this pop up.
- Yeah, I was also under the impression that they will create proper search engine for regular users, the AI crap is cancer
  
  It might be a bit naive, but here's to hoping that it's just a stepping stone for a proper alternative search engine.
  
  I was also under the impression that they will create proper search engine for regular users
  It is a proper search engine for regular users
  It will power regular search results:
  Called European Search Perspective (EUSP), the JV now aims to serve around 50% of French queries and 33% of German queries by the end of the year.
  And it also has an API 🫨 that AI search engines can use
  
  I bet that was the original plan, then they saw that the goal was nowhere near and decided to rebrand a subpar product "for AI".
- How I imagine the conversation went
  Qwant, Ecosia:
  we want to build an independent web search index that will greatly benefit European people, European economy, European tech industry and breaks the US monopoly on this area
  Government official:
  I have no idea what you are talking about but here is a 200 page grant request that you can fill up and if it is accepted can maybe get 5000€ in 2 years
  We want to build a search index WITH AI !
  OO , I'm calling the president ! you'll get billions of €.
- Yeah I really would prefer we moved away from it... but unfortunately I'm not sure that's possible. EU can't afford to ignore AI either.
  
  EU can't afford to ignore AI either.
  Can't afford to set fire to large piles of money?
  I'm being slightly flippant but I don't really understand what you meant by that.

The anagram isn't that hard to find, not a great sign they overlooked that...
- I don't think anyone really cares about things like that in 2025

24 comments