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PayPalNot gaming news but an important subject to cover anyway since it's something that affects me and GamingOnLinux directly, as well as all of you who regularly use a search engine. The OpenWebSearch might be one way to save us all.
It's certainly no secret that web searching is getting worse as all the AI enshittification continues. AI is more and more forced in your face, and the big few (Google, Microsoft) like to keep as much control as they possibly can. Just look at recent news, with Microsoft cutting off access to Bing Search APIs on August 11 2025 as they continue to pivot to AI.
Especially important for sites like GamingOnLinux, and pretty much any news site that isn't one of the big few that keep buying up all the others, as we might only be one algorithm change from not being shown in search results at all.
OpenWebSearch is one possible new ally in this internet fight, a European Union-funded project to build up a massive modern search index that doesn't depend on the big US giants. The idea is not to build a search system themselves, but to provide an open search API, so that others would be able to hook into it and make use of it.
They've just announced recently that it's going public in June:
After 2,5 years of intensive research and programming efforts, the entire Openwebsearch.eu project team is excited to grant access to its pilot of the first-ever federated pan-European Open Web Index (OWI).
From June onward, commercial and scientific development teams of any size as well as interested individuals are welcome to access and make use of almost a petabyte (and growing) of open web data under a general research license or – upon request – under a designated commercial license as well.
I'm very interested to see what becomes of this one. Hopefully something meaningful, but I remain skeptical on it doing much to make a dent in the sides of Google and Bing. Depends if they manage to get some search engines to make good use of it or not and if the licensing when it's out fully is actually reasonable.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
You can also find comments for this article on social media: I'm a little worried about this, as if this is pushed on EU citizens, could they make it biased against specific political or philosophical searches?? Especially as a more 'conservative' person, I worry if the EU could use this against people trying to search for information that promotes right-wing or right-leaning ideas.@SirMCJeager It's good that you worry, I don't think they will, but only because concerned citizens like you exist.
Outside of that, I don't really see the issue with our current search engine list. Google, DuckDuckGo, Brave, Bing, I've never had a issue with them.
On what is wrong with that list form an eu standpoint.
I can give you a few suggestions:
Each of these parties is stationed in the USA, which makes them basically by definition non-gdpr compliant, since Trump signed away the privacy shield.
This same Americanity also associates it with Trumps recent instability including his tendency to modify and forbid certain delivery of service in the EU.
Each of these parties has done exactly what you worry about the EU doing and often synchronous for one point, so they've reason to distrust them for that exact reason.
I'm a little worried about this, as if this is pushed on EU citizens, could they make it biased against specific political or philosophical searches?? Especially as a more 'conservative' person, I worry if the EU could use this against people trying to search for information that promotes right-wing or right-leaning ideas.Search is already biased against specific political or philosophical searches. Or rather, against specific political or philosophical viewpoints coming up in searches relevant to politics. Google systematically suppresses left wing and socialist points of view. A few years ago, certain sites such as Counterpunch and the World Socialist website suddenly noticed that traffic coming in from search dropped by about two thirds; within the rather small world of leftist political news there was quite a kerfuffle about it. Of course the media in general did not consider this worth reporting, so mostly nobody heard about it.
So yes, clearly it can happen because it is happening. Although not from government, except probably in China. And not to suppress the right--to the contrary, all the social media and search algorithms seem to systematically promote right wing viewpoints, particularly the far right because their stridency promotes "engagement" (and in one certain case, because the owner is a fascist).
Meanwhile, if this EU initiative does things that bias the results returned by search engines that use it, in a way that's unacceptable to search engine companies' right wing CEOs, then I guess they won't use it. So I don't think you need to worry too much about right wing viewpoints ceasing to have a massive advantage.
Honestly, the only alternatives to google that offer decent search results and even links to warez if thats your thing, are yandex and baidu
Last edited by Cato-the-younger on 20 May 2025 at 9:57 pm UTC
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