For the people who have not yet decided on a search engine. The most EU way you can go is Ecosia or Qwant as they are building their own search index.
Ecosia is my personal pick as its also aimed at planting trees and they have quite a good browser alongside it.
We will develop a privacy-first search index, which will be used by both Ecosia and Qwant, and unlike proprietary solutions, we are making the index available to others.
Good news, needs to happen as fast as possible.
France and Germany will have it this year, we’ll have to see how it evolves further but hopefully its a success!
Sounds great! I’ve been happy with Ecosia currently. I tried Qwant, but I have strict privacy settings enabled in my browser and it says it couldn’t get a secure connection. I’m sure it’s 100% safe, but I just settled for Ecosia for now. Looking forward to trying out their new partnered search engine.
It doesn’t mention whether it’ll be opensource or not. A proprietary search index that isn’t USAian is probably better, but still opensource would be better.
Don’t let perfect stand in the way of better I’d say, in the end both companies still need to make a return on investment
True, it’s a first step in the right direction :)
Maybe I’ll use Ecosia again
Honestly, I don’t have a lot of hope for this because Qwant is involved, and that’s never a good sign of things to come.
I, too, would like to know why Qwant is supposedly a liability for this venture. Before today I had never heard of Ecosia or Qwant, so I literally have no idea.
what problem do you have with qwant?
Why is that?
Now if only anyone of them would offer a paid ad-free option. I’d drop Kagi in an instant
Perhaps send their support an email about it to see what they say
Pity they aren’t on mastodon :/
This is the way! Excited to try it!
Great! Ecosia works super well, and it feels good to not having to rely on google to find things. Only thing I’d wish for is that they’d have some map service or similar to find restaurants and shop. There is sadly no good replacement for google maps that I’ve found
i mean you kinda need to specify what you want from a map, there are a bunch of things that google maps is actively the worst at
You could also use open street maps. For mobile I recommend using Organic Maps.l Only problem is, that the search isn’t that good.
Its already been mentioned but if you don’t need reviews you can use Here WeGo maps. Its a good alternative and with more users (who make fixes if something is missing) it’ll get better and better
Organic Maps
Try Here WeGo maps, it’s the closest one to Google maps but European
Ecosia works well enough for me too. The tree planting thing should never be forgotten. The scope of their work is impressive and they’re very transparent about their goals and funding. No other search engine comes close to that.
The tree planting sounds so much like greenwashing and an excuse to serve ads
200 million trees. Far from greenwashing.
Folks, critical thinking is more important than ever these days. Making conclusions based on a brain fart - when we have the internet at our fingertips - is partly why the world is the way it is.
I listened to a podcast a couple years ago. The founder talked about how he made sure that Ecosia can not be sold and monetized, he himself is not making much money from it. My english is not good enough to explain it in more detail. :)
I see greenwashing everywhere, but as far as I can tell from the podcast and their YouTube, this is legit.
Both are great! In my experience Qwant gives better search results, so thats what i use. I even prefer Qwant’s results over Google’s. But Ecosia is a great option as well because of the tree planting.
I use Ecosia for personal use and Qwant for work. So I support both!
Ecosia is my personal choice because of the tree planting as well. But I agree Qwant results are a bit better, which for me only matters while I work.
Is either one worth the switch from duckduckgo?
Yes it is.
I personally never really liked duckduckgo. I’d say Qwant is the better one of the two in terms of results (I use it for work) but for personal use I choose Ecosia for the environmental impact, the results are getting better but not on Qwants level yet
If only they would brainstorm and find better names. 😂
Any News on when this will go live?
1H 2025 in France and Germany
1H for Qwant and its indexing of French websites. 2H for Exosia and its indexing of German websites.
The index is expected to start serving France-based search engine traffic for Ecosia and Qwant by the first quarter of next year. It will then expand to include a “significant portion” of traffic in Germany by the end of 2025. English would be the third language they’d look to add, the pair said, adding that more European languages could follow in the future if momentum builds.
1H?
1-handed (as opposed to 2-handed) which means you can wield two 1H but only one 2H. Usually 2H has the higher damage dice, while 2 1H allows for two attacks in one turn instead (which means either slightly increased base dmg or flexibility of attacking multiple targets) ;)
half
I’ve never seen “1H” used before for what I’m guessing means Q3. Where’s that from?
I’m pushing 40, have a mind like a steel trap for phrases and terms that crop up in pop culture, and have a business degree. I have never heard “H1” or “H2” before, let alone “1H”. To me that suggests that it’s not a common term in British or American English and instead is common in another language. Kind of like Swedes and numbering the weeks of the year (perhaps the other Scandinavian countries do it too), or the various languages that interpret “half one” as meaning halfway to one (i.e. 1230) rather than half past (1330).
Of course it could just be a bizarre blindspot and it’s passed me by but damnit, I’m curious now!
I think it is a central European thing where we used to structure the business year into two halfs - erstes Halbjahr and zweites Halbjahr - in regards to reports etc while the anglosphere has tended to structure it into quarters. And it’s still done for things like release dates. But don’t quote me on that, as I have no sources.
impressive! :) its used in austria. i wrongly assumed its used in the english too.
Was using startpage the entire time but because of this i’ll try out qwant.
Startpage is also majorly American owned, so good to step away from it!
Good thing I recently changed my standard search engine to Wcosia!
