In search of the (European) search strategy

The world needs a better, more accurate search engine in German and French.

At least that's the message from Ecosia and Qwant. The former is from Germany and the latter from France.

Recently, these two companies announced the formation of a joint venture, the European Search Perspective, which aims to build a search index for that continent.

Both companies have very noble respective missions — 'The greenest way to search. You find what you need, we plant trees where they're needed,' and 'The search engine that values you as a user, not as a product' — but both also struggle with a sound strategy.

Everyone knows Google, which was declared a monopoly by the courts this year. Some people might be aware of Microsoft's Bing, the thing which is trying to break into double digit market share. And then there are the rest, where, in order to find them, you have to use Google and search for 'alternative search engines to Google.'

Aside from their mission statements, what is special about Ecosia and Qwant?

Nothing.

What both companies actually built is a front end for Bing (Ecosia and Qwant) and Google (Ecosia). Rather than hard work and innovation, they opted for a simple path forward. Build a front end, use an index built and maintained by  others, get traffic and sell advertising.

So much for you not being the product.

Now the reality of their strategic options is forcing them to change.

As you can imagine, building and maintaining a search engine index is an expensive proposition.

You need data center(s) with lots of computers, a fast Internet connection and a sizable team of people who can make all this happen. As you can imagine, neither Google nor Microsoft provides this service for free.

The current list price from Microsoft for where you can get up to 150 transactions per second goes for about $20 to $22 per one thousand transactions. Which means that — when fully utilized — they pay $20 every 6 to 7 seconds.

The same functionality used to cost between $5 to $6 for the same volume and throughput. But a major price hike happened in 2023 and now, both companies scramble to survive.

True, neither Microsoft, nor Google (and Apple for that matter) are not making life easier for these two companies. The 'default settings' are here for a reason, and to switch to a new search engine requires extra work. Nobody wants to work hard.

This is the time when their strategic choices are being tested. I would like to know what their initial strategy was and if it changed over the years. Qwant went live in 2013 and has been kept alive through various government programs or subsidies. Since 2013, the company has done little to remove its dependency on Microsoft. In fact, it even moved its computing to Azure.

Ecosia started in 2009, and it is using the front end for Bing as a money-raising engine for planting trees around the world — with no desire to make search results better.

A report from 2023 shows that Ecosia had 0.29% search engine market share. Qwant was included in the category of ‘Other’ with 0.35% market share.

Both companies, when it comes to market impact, are rounding errors. Apparently, they are trying to reverse their fortune by building their own search index.

It’s unlikely it will work. It would require a massive investment of money, people and time. Neither company can do that.

On top of that, add the rapidly-shifting search landscape, thanks to OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity, to name a few.

Both Ecosia and Qwant depend on Bing, and, judging by Microsoft actions, Microsoft doesn't want (or need) them around.

Their access to customers is controlled by Google (Android) and Apple (iOS) on mobile and Microsoft (Windows) on desktop devices. Any organic or paid online marketing depends on Google and Bing. This simple observation didn't push them to change their respective strategies over the years.

The only thing left for them to do is hide behind government regulations.

This made them complacent, and, as a result, they failed to work hard on a winning strategy. For them, the recurrent pattern is to slowly glide into oblivion.