The European institutions are taking another concrete step to distance themselves from technologies developed by large US multinational corporations. In the coming weeks, the European Parliament will stop using Google as the default solution for online searches on the devices allocated to its offices.
According to information gathered by the outlet Politico, from June 4 onwards, every query initiated from the address bar in the Firefox and Edge browsers will be automatically directed to Qwant, a search engine developed in France.
Employees will still retain the freedom to visit other search portals by typing their address or to adjust the system settings according to their browsing habits.
Europe Wants to Free Itself from Google, Qwant Is the New Default Search Engine
The modification of the basic settings responds to a precise political vision. An internal email, recently sent to staff, frames the decision as an act consistent with Parliament’s commitment to ensuring Europe’s digital sovereignty and to rigorously protecting the personal data of those operating online.
In the same communication, Qwant is described as a European platform strongly oriented toward safeguarding privacy.
The shift to continental software is realized in a period of targeted institutional maneuvers, during which the Union as a whole seeks to break free from foreign IT tooling to promote internal development.
On June 3, the European Commission is expected to present a full package of measures dedicated to this strategy. Among member countries, France appears particularly determined to pursue this path: the French government stations are undergoing a transition from Windows to Linux and are about to replace well-known corporate communication systems such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams in favor of the national platform Visio for videoconference management.
New Equilibria for Web Searches
The move away from Google services by the European Union coincides with a period of transformation for search tools, especially after the Californian company began to massively integrate generative artificial intelligence into its responses.
Other alternative platforms are gaining strong traction among those who prefer a traditional approach. DuckDuckGo has reported a sharp increase in the downloads of its app precisely in conjunction with Google’s recent integrations.
The company, which offers the option to disable generative artificial intelligence during searches, said last Tuesday that on June 1st it had broken its all-time daily traffic record in a single day.
