The French search engine Qwant will use servers from Microsoft, and use some advertising services and indexing websites of the US computer giant, as part of a partnership announced Friday. Qwant used its own servers so far, but Microsoft will now make available "the additional computing power of its Azure cloud" (its online cloud computing services), said the two partners in a joint statement.
Qwant will also use "Microsoft advertising services" (the advertising network of Microsoft) as well as some "algorithmic research" of Bing, the search engine of the American group, in the fields where Qwant is not present, they specified . The search engine of Microsoft will complement that of Qwant in areas of the web where Qwant does not refer content: for example for some images, or sites in certain geographical areas, he also explained.
No data storage
Launched in 2013, Qwant is one of a few global companies with their own web search algorithms, different from those used by the ultra-dominant Google and the Microsoft Bing challenger. Qwant also promises Internet users to protect their privacy by not storing their search data, unlike US giants who keep track of Internet searches to better target the sending of advertisements. "Qwant remains master of its technology, including its algorithm, its index, and its client infrastructure without collecting their personal data," said Friday the two partners in their release.
Microsoft's computing power will allow Qwant to run Web page indexing faster for more relevant search results, said Eric Leandri, Qwant's boss, and Carlo Purassanta, head of Microsoft France. Qwant has indexed in its servers more than 20 billion web pages, a stock which must be updated constantly to take into account the updates of these pages. "Without this agreement, it would take us another two or three years" to reach the level of service that Qwant will offer now, said Eric Leandri, who wants to make Qwant the "European sovereign engine".
The search engine of the French administration
The French government praised Qwant's willingness to expand by announcing on Friday that the search engine would now be offered by default on all computers in the French administration. Qwant is "the only search engine that fulfills all our requirements" in terms of privacy and geographical location of data, said Cédric O, Secretary of State for Digital, in an intervention at the start fair -up Vivatech.
Qwant says today is available in 28 languages and more than 40 countries. But its market share remains difficult to pin down. According to the Irish company Statcounter, which specializes in measuring traffic on the web, Google accounted for 94.09% of search engine market shares in France in April 2019, Bing 3.16% and Qwant 0.65%. But Qwant disputes these figures and claims a market share of around 4% in the French market, without detailing its calculations.
As part of its partnership with Microsoft, Qwant promises to donate "to the French press companies 5% of advertising revenue generated". "At our size today, it's millions of euros, but at the size of others (search engines) it would make hundreds of millions of euros," said Eric Léandri.