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Why there’s no European Google? (ploum.net)
submitted 3 days ago by HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org to c/opensource@lemmy.ml
16 comments fedilink hide all child comments

At the same time, the "World Wide Web," composed of the HTTP protocol and the HTML format, was invented by a British citizen and a Belgian citizen who were working in a European research facility located in Switzerland. But the building was on the border with France, and there’s much historical evidence pointing to the Web and its first server having been invented in France.

It’s hard to be more European than the Web!

[ ... ]

Some are proud because they made a lot of money while cutting down a forest. Others are proud because they are planting trees that will produce the oxygen breathed by their grandchildren. What if success was not privatizing resources but instead contributing to the commons, to make it each day better, richer, stronger?

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[-] DieserTypMatthias@lemmy.ml 7 points 2 days ago

SearXNG exists and Qwant is one search engine that I know of.

[-] Tenderizer78@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 days ago

Qwant uses Google or Bing as a backend.

[-] vapourisation@programming.dev 11 points 2 days ago

They have built their own index with Ecosia and are working towards fully using that but currently I believe they use a mix.

Making your own index is difficult and expensive. They're doing the work and I think we should support them in that.

[-] cabbage@piefed.social 4 points 2 days ago

Mojeek is the only usable engine I know of that's European and truly independent at the moment. But the results are not nearly as good as in Qwant.

SearXNG also runs on Google and Bing in the backend, and I can never seem to find an instance that works reliably.

I think the Qwant/Ecosia index focuses primarily on the French (and German?) speaking web to begin with, but I'm hopefull it will get good in all languages eventually.

[-] Atemu@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 days ago

SearXNG is not a search engine, it's a search engine proxy. The actual search engines that are being proxied are still the same old google, bing etc.

this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2026
85 points (94.7% liked)

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