France Gets Europe's Own Search - Will Users Switch?

Ecosia and Qwant began delivering search results from their jointly built European index to users in France on 8 July 2024. The launch gives Ecosia its first in-house results since 2009 and, according to both companies, advances European technology autonomy.

How the joint index works

The partners formed European Search Perspective, a joint venture that runs the Search Trusted API Access Network (Staan). French-language queries on Ecosia are now answered partly by Staan, which merges pages collected by Ecosia’s new crawler with Qwant’s established web corpus.

• Staan began routing live traffic on 8 July 2024.
• Ecosia targets 30 percent coverage of French queries by December 2025.
• User data remains on servers in France and Germany under EU privacy rules.
• Staan offers an API other European firms can license for search or AI projects.
• The venture accepts outside investment, unlike Ecosia’s steward-owned parent firm.

Statement from leadership

This index is a critical step for digital plurality. - Christian Kroll, Ecosia CEO

The quote first appeared in Kroll’s statement to Tech.eu.

Relationship with Microsoft Bing remains

Outside France, Ecosia continues to purchase organic results and ads from Microsoft Bing. Qwant still supplements its answers with Bing data and other syndicated sources. Both companies plan to expand Staan to additional markets once performance targets in France are met.

Regulatory and market context

The Digital Markets Act, enforced in March 2024, requires Android and iOS to display default search choice screens across the European Union - both Ecosia and Qwant appear on those lists.

The European Commission also backs local data infrastructure through initiatives such as GAIA-X. While Staan operates independently of those programmes, it follows similar data-localisation principles.

Timeline leading up to launch

• May 2023 - Ecosia announces the partnership.
• Early 2024 - Preliminary crawling tests conclude.
• Q1 2024 - Qwant integrates its ranking algorithms into Staan.
• 8 July 2024 - Joint index goes live in France with 3.8 billion pages.

Further information is available on the Ecosia blog at blog.ecosia.org and in the Qwant newsroom at about.qwant.com. All dates follow Central European Summer Time.