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Look… Doesn’t that feel kind of like self-pitying rot to anyone here? Why are we dependent on US technology? Because we are so ethical and pure…
Here’s the truth.
In the late 90s, a German student created a search engine in Germany. It was a little thing. It only scraped a few hundred media outlets. You signed up, defined some keywords, and when an article matching those keywords was published, you received a notification.
He immediately was sued and forced to shut down under copyright law. Google could operate in the US under Fair Use.
Eventually, years later search engines were legalized in Germany (and the EU). But by then the Internet was dominated by US companies. It makes no sense to spend billions to build a European Google that does exactly what Google already does.
The reason that there is no European Google is that we insist that information must be owned. No data processing without the explicit consent of the owner. Which means, we insist that some intellectual property owners should be allowed to extract rent from us all.
There’s actually pretty many to choose from.
Ones I’ve tried:
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https://www.ecosia.org/ (🇩🇪) I’ve found this to work best for me
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https://www.qwant.com/ (🇫🇷) also good, but I find the ads sometimes too distracting
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https://www.startpage.com/ (🇳🇱) also good
others:
- https://www.mojeek.com/ (🇬🇧) if you like the brits… but really, who does?! 😅
- https://good-search.org/ (🇩🇪) interesting
- https://swisscows.com/ (🇨🇭) lol
Honestly, just switch your default search engine in your phone-settings and see what happens. After a while you don’t even realize you’re not using Google anymore. And if you’re not pleased with the search result (which I rarely am these days, using ecosia) see if Google gives a better answer. Mostly not. Happy experimenting! ;)
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Because, generally speaking, Europe has this thing called laws, and the government arguably exists to protect it’s “citizens”.
In the US you have this thing called lobbyists and the government unilaterally exists, only to protect it’s “corporations”
For example, in Europe McDonald’s French fries contain 3 ingredients (potato, salt, oil) and in the US there are around 20 ingredients… The US adds all that extra shit to make the frier oil last longer, to make it easier to clean, etc. and fuck you for being poor if it gives you cancer.
Europe has better frameworks in place to prevent robber barons, this is just as true for the digital age as it was 200 years ago.
For example, in Europe McDonald’s French fries contain 3 ingredients (potato, salt, oil) and in the US there are around 20 ingredients… The US adds all that extra shit to make the frier oil last longer, to make it easier to clean, etc. and fuck you for being poor if it gives you cancer.
That’s actually a very poor example because the US and Europe have very different regulatory frameworks. The US actually requires more details when listing ingredients than Europea does.
That’s actually a very poor example because the US and Europe have very different regulatory frameworks. The US actually requires more details when listing ingredients than Europea does.
In the EU you must list all ingredients in your product. Ordered by what it has the most.
There is a bigger picture here. Food in America is using ingredients that is not allowed in the EU because its seen as toxic. That is what the focus should stay on i think.
You do understand that the US bans ingredients that the EU allows for the same reason, right, sparky?
Qwant (french) got its own indexing.
Edit: the linked article isn’t about search engines but big tech companies.
Qwant is fricken awesome, it’s as good as and sometimes even better than Google
Anyone able to chime in on differences with Ecosia?
They’re both very similar.
Both still use Google and Bing for part of their search results (albeit with the search queries somewhat anonymised). And both have been working together on a European search index which they have been slowly rolling out over the past year orso now.
Ecosia differentiates itself from the competition by using part of their profits to plant trees, and by promising that their servers are run on renewable energy.
Personally I use Ecosia over Qwant, because I found the search results for news articles to be a bit better. But ultimately both are very similar.
