Ecosia is teaming up with Qwant to build a European search index

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Overall reaction to Ecosia–Qwant partnership

  • Many welcome a European index as overdue and strategically important for reducing dependence on US tech and increasing “tech autonomy.”
  • Others are pessimistic, predicting a repeat of past failed search challengers (e.g., “next Yahoo”), or seeing Qwant’s history as underperforming and overpromising.
  • Some note this blog post is months old and question what concrete progress has been made since.

Search quality, UX, and comparisons

  • Ecosia and Qwant are criticized for UI bloat and childish or “loud” front pages, though some say the actual results pages are relatively clean and less ad-heavy than Google.
  • Qwant is described as largely Bing-backed with a smaller proprietary index that appears mostly for French or limited cases; several users say their results are effectively Bing’s.
  • Users compare alternatives:
    • Kagi: paid, niche but high-quality, benefits from not being a big SEO target, uses multiple sources (incl. Google/Bing, possibly others).
    • Mojeek and Brave Search: independent indexes; GOOD Search uses Brave and markets itself as a German social enterprise.
    • Yandex: praised by some for better results on “politically sensitive” topics and older/edge content, but others strongly reject using a Russian engine for geopolitical and ethical reasons.

Open index and crawling debate

  • Several argue for an open or shared web index to enable many small search frontends and legal, reusable datasets, with tiered or non-commercial licensing.
  • Common Crawl is mentioned, but its license is criticized as too restrictive; suggestions include more permissive licensing or paid feeds.
  • Others highlight technical and governance issues: recency, massive data volumes, who prioritizes crawls, robots.txt, and platform blockades (e.g., Reddit, Facebook).

Privacy, funding, and trust

  • Skepticism about Qwant’s ties to publisher Axel Springer and prior misrepresentation of having its “own” index.
  • Debate over whether French/German jurisdictions are meaningfully more privacy-preserving than the US, with examples of abuses and counterexamples of legal pushback.
  • Ecosia’s nonprofit/steward-ownership claims get mixed reactions: some trust monthly financial reports; others are deeply cynical that any legal structure can resist future financial pressure.

Languages, scope, and politics

  • Concern that focusing first on French/German could fragment search; others say it’s just a pragmatic starting point and that many users prefer local-language results.
  • Broader political undercurrent: divesting from US tech vs. not wanting to move toward Russian influence, and disagreements over “censorship” and media bias across different countries and engines.