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Qwant and Ecosia debut Staan, a European search index that aims to take on Big Tech (techcrunch.com)

submitted 9 months ago by Sunshine@piefed.ca to c/buyeuropean@feddit.uk

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[-] extarion@lemmy.zip 54 points 9 months ago

While I'm glad to see Qwant and Ecosia's progress, I have to say a search index "designed specifically for LLMs and generative AI agents" was not quite what I was hoping for when I saw this pop up.

[-] pearcake@sh.itjust.works 16 points 9 months ago

Yeah, I was also under the impression that they will create proper search engine for regular users, the AI crap is cancer

[-] extarion@lemmy.zip 3 points 9 months ago

It might be a bit naive, but here's to hoping that it's just a stepping stone for a proper alternative search engine.

[-] MysteriousSophon21@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

Not naive at all - building the index is the hardest part and once they have that infrastructure, pivoting to consumer search is way more feasable than previous European attempts like Quaero that faild.

[-] biofaust@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago

I bet that was the original plan, then they saw that the goal was nowhere near and decided to rebrand a subpar product "for AI".

[-] BastingChemina@slrpnk.net 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

How I imagine the conversation went

Qwant, Ecosia:

we want to build an independent web search index that will greatly benefit European people, European economy, European tech industry and breaks the US monopoly on this area

Government official:

I have no idea what you are talking about but here is a 200 page grant request that you can fill up and if it is accepted can maybe get 5000€ in 2 years
We want to build a search index WITH AI !
OO , I'm calling the president ! you'll get billions of €.

[-] noretus@sopuli.xyz 4 points 9 months ago

Yeah I really would prefer we moved away from it... but unfortunately I'm not sure that's possible. EU can't afford to ignore AI either.

[-] Flamekebab@piefed.social 11 points 9 months ago

EU can't afford to ignore AI either.

Can't afford to set fire to large piles of money?

I'm being slightly flippant but I don't really understand what you meant by that.

[-] noretus@sopuli.xyz 4 points 9 months ago

EU can't be in a technological disadvantage when it comes to AI. Of course it wants to make it possible for European AI devs to have support, like a search index that also conveniently has the potential of favoring information that aligns with EU interests.

[-] Flamekebab@piefed.social 5 points 9 months ago

EU can't be in a technological disadvantage when it comes to AI.

I think we might be at an impasse as "AI" currently seems to be a solution looking for a problem as far as I can see. Not that LLMs are completely worthless but the "hoover up the internet and hope something useful comes from it" approach seems to be a bit of a technological cul-de-sac that I think the EU would be better off ignoring. Let the other nations spaff money and resources on it, learn from their mistakes, then make a move. We're long past first-mover advantage after all, so we'd only be playing catch-up. Why not just wait a bit and leapfrog?

[-] noretus@sopuli.xyz 2 points 9 months ago

You could be very right but I doubt powers that be want to take that chance. That said, I do consider AI dangerous in the world of information warfare.

[-] lime@feddit.nu 1 points 9 months ago

search has been using ai under the hood for many years, long before llms came along. that's why google has had so much ai research, even back in like 2012. it's one of the best ways to keep track of that much data.

like it or not the field is very useful, llms are just a rather stupid user-facing part.

[-] Flamekebab@piefed.social 2 points 9 months ago

Hey if they're actually useful then that's fine! The useful stuff hasn't really been what the AI bros have been pushing in recent years.

[-] lime@feddit.nu 1 points 9 months ago

no, that's fair. we usually don't see the useful stuff because it doesn't need hype and just shows up as a data point.

[-] Flamekebab@piefed.social 1 points 9 months ago

And this is why Lemmy is better than Reddit. Not everything has to be a knife fight 😆

[-] lime@feddit.nu 1 points 9 months ago

as long as we're not in a knife fighting kinda community, or i manage to make the mistake of criticising north korea again... then yeah

this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2025

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