Ecosia, the tree-planting search engine from Berlin, and Qwant, France’s privacy-focused search provider, announced a joint venture in November 2024 to develop their own European search index^[1][2]. The partnership aims to reduce their dependence on Microsoft’s Bing APIs, which both companies currently rely on for search results^[2:1].

The new venture, called European Search Perspective (EUP), is structured as a 50-50 ownership split between Ecosia and Qwant^[2:2]. Qwant’s engineering team and existing search index development will transfer to EUP, with Qwant CEO Olivier Abecassis leading the joint venture^[2:3].

“The door is open and we are ready to talk to anyone,” said Abecassis, while noting they want to “move as fast as possible” with their existing shareholders’ support^[2:4]. The index will begin serving France-based search traffic for both engines by Q1 2025, expanding to cover “a significant portion” of German traffic by end of 2025^[2:5].

Rising API costs are a key motivator, following Microsoft’s massive price hike for Bing’s search APIs in 2023^[2:6]. However, neither company plans to completely stop using Bing or Google, instead aiming to diversify their technical foundation as generative AI takes a more central role in search^[2:7].