Google is testing the ‘impact’ of removing EU news from search results

What a good timing, honestly. In recent news of Nov 11th, Ecosia and Qwant, two European search engines, join forces on an index to shrink reliance on Big Tech (TechCrunch news article):

Qwant, France’s privacy-focused search engine, and Ecosia, a Berlin-based not-for-profit search engine that uses ad revenue to fund tree planting and other climate-focused initiatives, are joining forces on a joint venture to develop their own European search index.

The pair hopes this move will help drive innovation in their respective search engines — including and especially around generative AI — as well as reducing dependence on search indexes provided by tech giants Microsoft (Bing) and Google. Both currently rely on Bing’s search APIs while Ecosia also uses Google’s search results.

Maybe it's time for Europeans to support more European tech companies and leave USA-based tech companies behind, here is a good start: https://european-alternatives.eu/

I've been testing this for years now and the transition has been seamless

Which do you recommend?

This is the opposite of what you think it is.

Google says it’s running the “time-limited” test because EU regulators and publishers “have asked for additional data about the effect of news content in Search.” The company says it will continue to show results from websites and news publishers located outside the EU, and it will resume showing results from EU news publishers once the test ends.

This is the EU testing what it would be like if they ditched Google, not Google testing what it would be like without the EU. The test also doesn't impact the US.

Big tech needs to be stopped yesterday. This literally has china great firewall energy and I hate it.

This is one of the rare occasions I'm siding with Google. The news outlets are claiming that they should be paid money for those result snippets. It's not because I'm caring for Google so much but because that stance hurts small search engines.

My brother in Lemmy, this is what stopping Big Tech looks like.

Europe made laws that say that Google and others need to pay if they want to link to EU publishers. Well, maybe the price they are asking is not worth it.

You're right about the firewall energy, but that's simply how these laws work. The point of copyright, as well as age verification and other such laws, is to control who may access certain information.

I mean, they've done this when places charge them money to index the news articles there.

It hardly seems reasonable to both mandate that they index a given piece of news media and that they pay a fee to do so.

Europe asked Google to do this so they can monitor what kind of influence Google has.

Which ironically makes me think banning Google outright in the EU over this would be the right call to make.

A US news echo chamber at the whims of whatever they think will appease trump is going to be horrifying...

A surprising amount

Eh, there are some search engines in the EU, the notable one I know about is MetaGer, but apparently they had to stop supporting their free, ad-supported service due to Yahoo ending its contract with them. But it's based in Germany and still exists today.

That said, it's a meta search engine and I don't think it has its own index, but who knows, maybe if enough people sign up, they'll work on their own engine some day.

I just clicked on that link and the first headline is about Barbados, a country very clearly not in Europe. Lol

Absurd take