Qwant

Qwant

Type	Société par actions simplifiée
Industry	Web search engine
Founded	Paris, France (February 16, 2013 (2013-02-16))
Founder	Jean-Manuel Rozan Éric Leandri
Headquarters	Paris, France
Website	www.qwant.com

Qwant is a French search engine that claims to be without user tracking and without filter bubble.^[1] It launched on February 16, 2013, as a beta version. A final version was released on July 4, 2013.^[2] A new version was published in April 2015.^[3]

Search

Qwant offers several types of results including conventional websites, online stores, news websites and social networks.^[4]

According to its founder, Qwant does not want to compete with Google but "to show something different".

In Search mode, the results are organized in columns:

• Web
• News
• Qnowledge (displayed infoboxes of certain Wikipedia articles)
• Social
• Shopping

It is possible to refine the search for each column by typing another keyword.

The "Media" mode is for photos and videos; while the "People" mode if for finding people or organizations on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and Myspace.

Users can create a free account allowing them to create notebooks and notes.

Creation and launch

This search engine was cofounded in 2011 by Jean-Manuel Rozan, a financier, and Éric Leandri, specialist in computer security.

It was launched February 16, 2013, after two years of research and development.^[5]

Communication

Several French newspapers and news sites talked about Qwant just after its beta launch in February 2013 and its final launch in July 2013.

• « Qwant.com - The new social search engine », en.kioskea.net
• « Qwant, le moteur de recherche à la française », france_info.fr (French)
• « Qwant : un moteur de recherche français pour concurrencer Google », pcinpact.com (French)
• « Qwant : moteur de recherche français à la sauce sociale », zdnet.fr (French)
• « Qwant : moteur de recherche made in France », génération-nt.com (French)
• « Qwant, le nouveau moteur de recherche français à l’assaut de Google, Bing et Yahoo ?! », lejournaldunumerique.com (French)
• « Qwant.com, challenger de Google », le_nouvel_economiste.fr (French)
• « Qwant, le moteur de recherche français, est lancé », futura-sciences.com (French)
• « Qwant, un nouveau moteur de recherche français qui parcourt les réseaux sociaux », l'expansion.l'express.fr (French)

Criticism

Shortly after the release, many observers expressed doubts about the nature of Qwant. According to them, Qwant is not really a search engine but simply a website aggregating results of other search engines like Bing and the "Qnowledge Graph" is only the content of Wikipedia.^[6] The company has rejected the reports and assert that they do have their own Web crawler and use other search engines for semantic indexing related purposes.^[7]

References