In context: As Google customers complain in regards to the worsening high quality of search outcomes and GenAI integration, European organizations are working to plant the seeds of other options. One such initiative goals to construct a public index to help new serps and cut back Europe’s reliance on Google and Bing.
Early trials of the Open Internet Index are set to start subsequent month. This rising mission may assist European international locations transfer away from dominant, ad-driven serps. As US tech giants more and more optimize search round generative AI and promoting, the OpenWebSearch.eu initiative seeks to foster nonprofit options.
The Open Internet Index itself shouldn’t be a search engine. Relatively, it capabilities like a digital library from which serps can retrieve recordsdata and net pages. Main search suppliers depend on proprietary indexes, whereas smaller engines are sometimes depending on them. In accordance with the Open Internet mission, this centralization offers firms like Google disproportionate management over the worldwide net.
Regulators in the UK and European Union have constantly pushed again towards American tech giants resembling Apple and Google, significantly on points involving search and synthetic intelligence.
In the meantime, customers world wide have reported a gradual decline in search high quality. Web site operators additionally argue that Google is discouraging customers from leaving its ecosystem, and generative AI instruments steadily battle to ship correct data. Some teams imagine growing Europe-based options is a part of the answer.
New: How AI Overviews Shift Visitors From Publishers to Google
It isn’t sufficient that Google’s AI Overviews cut back clicks to writer web sites 📉
Google designed these in order that what few clicks stay result in partitions of irrelevant advertisements and/or dangerous search outcomes
Hyperlink in 🧵 pic.twitter.com/usrycPvTNS
– Cyrus (@CyrusShepard) Might 8, 2025
To perform this, a 14-member consortium, together with universities, knowledge facilities, tech firms, and CERN, goals to fund and construct the infrastructure for a strong and publicly accessible net index.
Small and medium-sized firms may use it to construct serps, giant language fashions, or different functions that do not attempt to promote customers advertisements, or no less than function independently of US giants resembling Google and Bing.
The mission additionally goals to advertise functions that adhere to European laws, values, and cultures. For instance, EU-based serps and LLMs would theoretically produce extra dependable leads to languages apart from English. The consortium can be fastidiously contemplating how the index scrapes net content material and the way clicks affect search rankings.
The primary open trial shall be launched by way of a Zoom assembly on June 6, from 10 AM to midday CEST. Contributors will achieve entry to roughly one petabyte of content material. The finished Open Internet Index is predicted to host about 5 petabytes, with plans to scale to 10 petabytes in future iterations.
