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.
Now if only anyone of them would offer a paid ad-free option. I’d drop Kagi in an instant
Maybe I’ll use Ecosia again
This is the way! Excited to try it!
If only they would brainstorm and find better names. 😂
Is either one worth the switch from duckduckgo?
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
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
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.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.
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.
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?
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.
Good thing I recently changed my standard search engine to Wcosia!
Was using startpage the entire time but because of this i’ll try out qwant.
