Two Search Engine Startups Team Up To Take On Google

Ask the search engine Ecosia about “Paris to Prague” and the flight booking websites dominate the results. Ecosia CEO Christian Kroll would prefer to introduce more train options, which he considers to be better for the environment. But because its results are licensed to Google and Microsoft’s Bing, Ecosia has little control over what is displayed. Kroll is ready for that to change.

Berlin-based Ecosia, which donates its profits to tree planting, and its Paris-based competitor Qwant announced on Tuesday that they will work together to develop a web directory.

The joint venture for profit, called European Search Perspective and located in Paris, can allow small companies and any others that decide to join to reduce their reliance on Google and Bing and provide results that are better tailored to the goals of their companies and the taste of Europeans. “We can reduce the impact on unethical or unsustainable companies and put good companies on top,” Kroll said of the eco-focused Ecosia.

Losing a small license fee would not be a concern for Microsoft or Google, which controls about 95 percent of the world’s search industry outside of China. But at a time when services like ChatGPT and TikTok are already redefining how users search, smaller competitors who may be more attractive to users could force larger companies to accelerate their investment in regional development.

Ownership of the European Search Perspective, or EUSP, will be split equally between Ecosia and Qwant, with Ecosia providing the cash and data while Qwant provides the labor. The technical infrastructure will come from OVHcloud, which shares ownership with Qwant. Ecosia has a search market share of about 1 percent in France and Germany and claims about 20 million users worldwide, while Qwant reports about 6 million users.

For Ecosia and Qwant, taking a larger share of the world beyond French- and German-speaking users will require success at home and growing revenue, largely through advertising. The challenge is obvious. Ecosia’s sales, according to its disclosure, fell by 8 percent to €24.2 million in the first nine months of this year compared to the same period in 2023. Exact results are not guaranteed to help grow business—ads are still served. with Microsoft and Google. Kroll says that will change anytime soon.

Companies are open to both increasing external funding of the EUSP and licensing its index to other companies, including those that may want to use the data to train AI systems. “We are bringing together highly experienced engineers to build independent technology in Europe—especially French and German language, and we have high hopes that this will attract the investment community,” Kroll said.