Overview

Qwant is the first independent search engine based in Europe. It was created by private entrepreneurs who chose to devote significant resources to the development of a powerful search engine, based on its own Web index and on innovative technologies.

First launched in France and Germany, Qwant embodies the vision of creating the first true European search engine that could pose as a serious alternative to major American platforms. It relies on two important pillars to gather users around values and services that are increasingly sought for:

• Respecting the fundamental rights of individuals and companies, in particular the right to privacy and the freedom of enterprise. Your search queries remain confidential. Given the tremendous amount of information that an internet user transmits daily throughout his/her queries, it is a fundamental commitment for users who search things for their personal life (topics of interests, political opinions, diseases, sexual life, financial investments, …) as well as for companies and administrations which search things related to their developments, projects or administrators. Qwant does no keep any history of an individual’s queries, does not store cookies which allow behavorial ad targeting, encrypts its queries to avoid third-party interception, and has its services audited by the CNIL (Commission nationale informatique et libertés), the French data privacy officer.
• Give the world a panoramic and unbiased view of the Internet to decompartmentalize the sources of information and reflect all the Web’s richness on a single page. Qwant is offered through a nice and easy user interface which allows to search the whole Web, or to specify the type of information requested (news, images, videos, shopping, social networks…). Its algorithms are applied with no discrimination towards specific websites or contents, which allows everyone to have an equal chance to get to the top of search results positions.Because it refuses to know who makes a search query, Qwant does not alter its results based on the user’s profile. Every user from the same region have the same answers, which avoids locking individuals into filter bubbles that make them see more and more of their own ideas (because opposite ones would get hidden), or offer products only based on their supposed purchasing power.  Qwant’s business model relies on putting someone who is looking for a product or service with someone who is offering it. This linking is done exclusively through ads based on the keywords that the user has just typed.