[Atlantis]

Will the French save European IT? Do they really protect our privacy or do we just have the choice between being spied on by the Yanks or by the French?

Qwant, a new vision of the web

Qwant was launched in France in February 2013 after two years of research and development. The European search engine continues to grow, innovate and the entire Qwant team is proud to present its new "Beta" version which includes:

- A modern and clutter-free design
- Ergonomically designed while keeping user experience in mind
- New in-depth search functions
- An interface adapted to mobile and tablet

Note: The beta version of a software or a search engine is a non-definitive version that can contain bugs or errors. We offer this public test version in order to obtain user feedback. Users can give us their opinion and signal possible malfunctions because we believe they are the best judges.

They have their work cut out for them if they want to catch up with Google.

Best of luck anyways!

The more the merrier.

PS: I'm not sure that name is a lucky choice.

[Atlantis]

I think the layout sucks. Script too small. Too many pictures. Or can the user customize the layout? Typical European, always make things too complicated.

OK, I got that fixed now. But the entries don't give the date and I don't see where I can change parameters like date for each search.

[Noelnada]

PS: I'm not sure that name is a lucky choice.

Qwant sounds good to me. Sounds better than DuckDuckGo i use already

It will be hard to make users switch from their habits of using google though. Pretty much like it's hard to make people switch from windows to linux i suppose.

[KlassWar]

If it's based in the EU, it doesn't respect your privacy. As simple as that.

To truly be private, among other things a web service needs to set shop in a country without data retention laws. If they're not willing to relocate somewhere that permits privacy, they're not trustworthy.

[noemon]

I don't think its going to be very hard, I switched already.

[W01f]

There are already google-alternatives such as duckduckgo that claim to protect your privacy. Fact of the matter is that you cannot verify their claims one way or another. Never assume something you type into a search engine is private in any sense of the word unless you physically own the servers and know exactly who has access to them.

[Harmattan]

Privacy is only the shadow of what it once was and will soon completely disappear. We are all whores sold by every website out there and tracked all day long by our governments. On the web, on the street, at your workplace, in shops, at your home, deep in an isolated forest away from civilization, with the exception of this mobile antenna transmitting your position and life signs.

[Smertios]

Competition is always good, but I think Google is good enough already.

Typical European, always make things too complicated.

What's so complicated about it. You click on a category on the left (web, news, images, videos, etc), then you type in what you want to search and check the results. It's exactly just as complicated as using Google.

[quetzalcoatl]

Privacy, like a prosperous middle class, is a temporary phenomenon associated with the industrial revolution. It will inevitably disappear as the middle class disappears. Privacy is not a right, it is a perquisite which may be purchased by the wealthy, or imposed by a powerful state on its own dealings.

[Smertios]

It will inevitably disappear as the middle class disappears.

And that will happen right after Jesus returns and right before Ragnarok.

[quetzalcoatl]

And that will happen right after Jesus returns and right before Ragnarok.

Take a look around. They are both fading before your eyes.

[mikema63]

And that will happen right after Jesus returns and right before Ragnarok.

The myth of the shrinking middle class, amiright?

[Rei Murasame]

Also, it's pretty ironic to hear that from a Brazilian such as Smertios. The outskirts of Rio de Janiero are packed with those who have either fallen (in every sense of the word, both economically and in bloodline), or are soon to fall.

The only way to arrest that decline is for Brazil to stop enacting the policies that create such a downward trend. It's amazing that they had a whole decade of economic booming in which the had the money and the mandate through which they could have made policy adjustments, but the Brazilian elites still managed to fuck everything up. And now that the boom is gone, what's their plan now?

[Smertios]

Hmm, I think we are going a bit off-topic here, but I'll answer your posts. If you guys want to continue discussing that, feel free to make a new thread and PM me with a link.

Take a look around. They are both fading before your eyes.

Yes, Freyr was just killed by Surtr in my backyard!

The myth of the shrinking middle class, amiright?

The middle class is shrinking only in the US (and some other developed countries), though. That's a process that has been going on pretty much since the 70s (you can thank the oil crisis for it, in part), but has accelerated due to the 2008 crisis.

Here in Brazil, over 40 million people actually entered the middle class (and those were soon dubbed the New Middle Class by the media) in the last decade or so. The country is going through an economic crisis right now, and those same people are starting to take the hit, but the middle class here is unlikely to go back to the same numbers it was in the early 2000s.

Worldwide, the middle class is actually growing, especially in Asia. And even the worst projections have the numbers for Western powers stabilizing, rather than shrinking.

(in every sense of the word, both economically and in bloodline)

What?

The only way to arrest that decline is for Brazil to stop enacting the policies that create such a downward trend. It's amazing that they had a whole decade of economic booming in which the had the money and the mandate through which they could have made policy adjustments, but the Brazilian elites still managed to fuck everything up. And now that the boom is gone, what's their plan now?

And those of us who have been opposing the economically-naïve PT government have been saying that for 13 years already. But well, that's Latin American populism for you. The last government benefitted from a demographic boom and claimed they were responsible for it. The naïve population believed and kept voting for them. Now we are where we are.

But well, economically, I'm not really worried. The Brazilian market is large enough to absorb the impact. We just have a fiscal problem with a government that taxes too much and returns too little. But that will probably change in the next few years.

[Eauz]

I must be doing something wrong or the website just doesn't work. I type in EUROPE to see what results came up and nothing appeared. Then a few searches would show server error.

Not impressed. I'll stick to the regular google.

[Galoredk]

Their search algorithm looks very unsophisticated. I would argue that they weight URLs and page titles too heavily when attributing page rank.
It reminds me of altavista or early google.

When I search for the word "mobiltelefon" a single telephone provider comes up on page one. However wikipedia pages are in position 1 - 5. A hungarian site is in position 9.
They could at least have some danish pages for a danish word and danish location...

[Glen]

They could at least have some danish pages for a danish word and danish location...

Almost every search engine began as a near-clone of http://dmoz.org and if you want a coveted top search ranking, that is where you must submit your site.

Even after 17 years of updates you can find the dmoz influence in Google. Bing may be further removed as its based on the older MSN search, and Yahoo had their own catalogue, but when those companies started relevance was less of an issue because user expectations differed. Typing a URL or domain into the search box used to fail by displaying irrelevant suggestions, but now users do that all the time for an extra level of indirection.

The real power is the strength of each search engine's alliances with regional ISPs, because its the ISPs that host regional caches for the search engines, and regional cache help determine regional user acceptance (speed, reliability, relevance), which in turn fuels user submissions of content, etc. Building a search engine is pretty easy but taking it global is a massive undertaking. Thanks to Galoredk for highlighting this.