this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2025
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Has Qwant improved recently? (i.postimg.cc)
submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Question for the Ecosia fans in the audience - The "we plant trees with ad revenue" is pretty cool, but they're just a front end for Google (or Bing), yeah?

If so, isn't their whole "we're green" thing misleading? Does it really support EU interests if the backend is still US?

[โ€“] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

They and Qwant are working together to create their own index

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Hey, that's cool! I hope they can keep up the environmental message as they wean off Google/MS. Have they given a timeframe on when they hope to implement it? Seems like a huge task.

[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Not exactly misleading since they do donate money to plant trees, that's the only claim they make.

Yes, they use Google/Bing frontend, but they have also shown interest in changing by teaming up with Qwant to build an EU-based indexer.

I don't use Ecosia BTW, I use Qwant, but I'm trying to be fair here.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

That's a fair point, "misleading" might've been a poor choice of words, but - one of the points on their page reads

"Our solar panels produce enough energy to power your searches twice over, meaning more renewables (and fewer fossil fuels) in the energy grid."

So fair enough, they're offsetting enough to power the connection from their users to Google/MS; I just thought this quote (and their home page in general) glossed over their reliance on those 3rd parties to "do the dirty work", so to speak.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I understand your view. It's just, I don't see what other choice they have/had.

Search engine backends are remarkably scarce, and very expensive to run. And if you're trying to build a front-end search engine today, you're pretty much limited to:

  • Google (US)
  • Bing (US)
  • Baidu (China)
  • Sogou (China)
  • Mojeek (UK)
  • Yandex (Russia)

Between these choices, and before the US decided to become a fascist state, realistically which of these engines made more sense to pick? Being honest. US tech has always been seen as trustworthy and the golden standard for all things tech, until very recently.

Sure, they could also use metasearch engines, but those are remarkably consumer-UNfriendly and would require tweaking beyond the capabilities of the common tech company.

The only thing I cannot explain here is why they didn't use Mojeek as their backend, and here we can only speculate..

Maybe it would have made Ecosia financially inviable if they had to pay for their API. Maybe they were concerned Mojeek's finances were too uninspiring compared to the colossal capacities that Google/Microsoft have.

Or maybe they thought people didn't want to have a radically different experience in results from what they are used to, and so decided to basically just give these two platforms a green makeover and promise to plant some trees. I don't know.

My point is, I wouldn't necessarily hold it against them. If anything, I am glad they agreed to join forces with Qwant in building a true EU-based search engine. Its sad that it took us so long to realise we need the basic infrastructure that other big economies have, but I suppose better late than ever.

I'm optimistic.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

I share your optimism. I'd love to see Ecosia + Qwant (or whoever, really) succeed.