Qwant Wants to Be Alternative to Google

Qwant, the French start-up whose search engine was released 18 months ago, is tapping into growing anger that Google has too much control over how Europeans surf the Web and is trying to take them on.

“There’s a need for a choice,” said Jean Manuel Rozan, a former financier who co-founded Qwant in 2011. “Europe is the only place in the world where people think that Google is the Internet.” Along with other Google alternatives like DuckDuckGo and Ixquick, a Dutch search engine, Qwant says it does not track people’s online movements and sells advertising based only on individuals’ search queries. Qwant’s other twist to the traditional search engine model is to include social media posts from services like Twitter directly in search results. Despite previous failures to a build a credible European search engine, Qwant’s co-founders hope its focus on privacy and attempts to combine social media posts and traditional search results will set it apart from Google.

[Dec 31]