Google and Qwant we need to talk. A month with Qwant. Alternatives to Google.

In the beginning there was the Yahoo directory, Lycos, Excite, Altavista, “Nomade” and “Voilà”. Then in 1998 (I remember, that’s the year I started working for Club-Internet) came Sergei Brin and Larry Page’s Google.

From Yahoo, Lycos, Excite, Altavista, Nomade and Voilà, to Google. The overwhelming dominance of Google in the research sector… but not only.

In 2000, Yahoo made a decision that may have helped them put one foot in the grave, to integrate Google as a search engine (they changed their minds later, opting for Bing). In 2002, AOL made the same choice. The deed was done, Google quickly took a huge share of the market, as impressive as Microsoft in the best years of Windows, and most of these engines were due to disappear.

Some figures to summarize Google in 2016: 92.9% of market share in the world (94.1% in France!), while Microsoft’s Bing is only 2.2%. Through Google, 20 billion websites visited each day by Googlebot, improving the results of 3.3 billion queries over the same period. Quite impressive!

At the same time Google has secured the loyalty of (and in some ways tied up) users by widely extending the spectrum of its services. Let’s list some of their success stories (for many failures that we’ve almost forgotten, with the exception of Google +): Google Chrome, Android, Youtube, Google Maps, Google translation, Gmail, Google Analytics, and Google Drive / Google docs…

The means of imposing their advertising model with Google Adwords, and becoming the best ally/enemy of publishers, on which they almost have the right to life and death since they generate most of their visits (and probably you too, dear reader). In this we regret the lack of credible competition, and a better balance with other research stakeholders.

In addition these revenues allow Google to finance their many projects for connected objects, autonomous cars, robotics, Big Data, and artificial intelligence including. You will soon be able to increase and rehabilitate human beings, (by a robotic transplant for example), and Google wants to have a leading position in this transhumanist vision. So that’s what the revenues generated by our dependence on Google are being used for. For better or for worse… time will tell.

What competition is there for Google in web search? The alternative search engines (Qwant, DuckDuckGo, Bing, and the others)

If Google has been so successful, it is primarily because they managed to skilfully provide a high quality innovative service. But also because they tie us up through a range of ancillary services, until we instinctively use it for all our research and then logically to reference our websites / blogs. We absolutely must appeal to the Mountain View giant or run the risk of being downgraded even if this means having a uniform WWW. Moreover, Google is increasingly using a different logic, proposing the answers to our questions directly on their page, we don’t even need to go as far as the website (often Wikipedia). A bit like Facebook which encourages publishers to publish their articles directly on the social network.

There are alternatives, but do you even know their names? I focused on Qwant (the French search engine) but there is also DuckDuckGo, Framabee, Wolfram Alpha, Startpage, and Yacy. Most of them promise to protect our private data and even not to track us, and not to confine us (on Google when you are logged in, you see different results from one user to another, or different from when in disconnected mode). Except for Microsoft’s Bing, which has a comparable model to Google’s, but oddly, despite its integration in Windows 10, it isn’t taking off, perhaps precisely because it doesn’t stand out from the crowd and also because Microsoft failed by abandoning its Windows Phone and therefore, in a way, abandoned the mobile search.

Is Qwant a credible alternative to Google? I tested it for one month with Firefox

Of course, Qwant’s approach attracts attention. To start with they are European, and French in a context dominated by the United States, of course people are enthusiastic. The company that raised 18.5 million euro (via Axel Springer German press group and the Caisse des dépôts) aims to attract 10% of Internet users. They handled 2.6 billion inquiries in 2016 which is not so bad, despite being less than Google in… one day. They’re going to have to communicate and convince. As to their business model, it’s purely and simply affiliation (commission on the sales generated).

It is very difficult, without extensive research to gauge the quality of results, and to determine whether those of Qwant (or any other) are more pertinent than Google’s. Of course, there’s the number of referenced pages, but also the algorithm behind them that ranks a page according to criteria that SEO experts fight over and whose pertinence is debatable. I am told that Google favors dependable websites that are fast, mobile, secure, connected to social networks and meeting certain writing rules. I won’t pretend that I’m not often puzzled, but I put up with it like everyone else, hoping that the site will become more visible in the results because when you write… you want to be read.

For Qwant, it’s a mystery. For transparency’s sake this should be communicated to help them stand out even more from the crowds. What we do know is that have their own index (some use Google). So we focused on the interface and what we thought about it. I found myself testing it by accident, by installing the Qwant extension on Firefox. I used it often, before gradually abandoning it. To begin with this happened almost unintentionally as I transferred back to Safari which integrates Google, Yahoo, Bing and DuckDuckGo by default. However I then reinstalled the dedicated extension.

Qwant. Results for the web, news, images, video, shopping but also social networks and music!

The search engine offers its results on several columns, which on the one hand enables you to have the different results on the one page, but on the other hand is hard to read, especially as the column shows up even if there is no answer (e.g. if there is nothing in social networks).

Let’s talk about social networks, because this is one of the most interesting points of this research (web, news, images, videos, shopping are more standard) as the social network results were not always pertinent (only Twitter from what I could see, with different results from the social networks search), or well presented (the classic RTs appear as an old style manual tweet). They need to be better displayed, with images and to propose other social networks.

Coming out on top, just before the results is the “about” tab (usually Wikipedia), the first images, videos and shopping. Strangely, while this is Qwant’s breadwinner, this part is still in development, there aren’t many results. Yet, I know when using Google that the result is skewed because linked to Google Adwords, here we could expect more transparency in the results (however this will not be the case since it would require placing the affiliate links in the forefront). I dream of a guaranteed unbiased price comparison. The other “front page” tabs are OK, even if there are too few results to be pertinent, and you tend to go directly to the headings on the side. I did not find how to hide this area in the preferences, it’s probably not possible. Pity.

I like the concept of the filter per topic on the side. There’s even “music” which for the moment only seems to show results for iTunes (no doubt due to affiliation from sales). Aggregating other services like Deezer, Spotify, Qoboz and others would be a big plus. You can also listen to samples directly on Qwant and see the search results for a given artist.

Finally, Qwant offers “Notebooks”. Looks like a curation system somewhere between bookmarks and a Scoop-it. Looks like a good idea also, but I confess I couldn’t understand it at all (so imagine the average user…).

This bit will please the parents, there’s also a Qwant Junior version.

We also love Google for some features that aren’t on Qwant. For example if I type “euro dollar Converter” on Qwant it starts to give me PDF converters… While Google immediately understands and can even give me the result of my conversion directly.

Qwant. It has potential pending a European stakeholder capable of driving the whole industry or a true public service?

The search element is so important on the internet that we can only encourage a European counterweight to American supremacy. We wish all the best to Qwant. You could also wonder if such a service should not be the domain of the independent public service to ensure its functioning and independence (in terms of advertising in particular).

What Qwant needs is time to find its model and refine its search function. Time and resources to communicate and convince. But we also need stakeholders to get together on a European level to form an eco-system comparable to that of Google. European start-ups need a driving force, a dynamic, and when you look at the most powerful companies/brands in the world you see Google, Apple, Amazon, AT & T, Microsoft, Samsung, Verizon… The first European in the area of technology is Deutsch Telecom / T in 19th place, the first French company (Orange)… is 51st… !

Finally the French need to leave their comfort zone and try out other search engines, but for that, they need to be informed.

What do you think of Qwant and other alternatives to Google?