The economic value of a European Open Web Index could amount to billions | Media Release

A comprehensive market feasibility study reveals: huge socio-economic potential of OpenWebSearch.EU within first 4 years and beyond

Starnberg, August 24 – Innovation and economic growth in Europe increasingly depend on digital sovereignty and direct access to open data. The Open Web Search project OWS.EU was set up between 14 consortium partners from IT, research and education with the aim of creating a European Open Web Index (OWI) as a foundation for independent web search in Europe. The purpose of the project is to establish a web index that benefits society not only by being transparent and open, but also by minimising commercial bias as currently often seen in conventional search results. The OWI should also serve as a foundation for digital sovereignty, which could drive rapid economic growth across many fields. 

As part of the OWS.EU Community Programme the Munich based consulting firm Mücke Roth & Company (MRC) has been appointed with a market-potential study to forecast the quantifiable economic and societal impact of the OWI within its first years of operation.

Key study findings

The study results underpin a large range of potential economic growth opportunities that could emerge for the first time through being independent of non-European tech giants. This applies to the IT and AI sector as well as to traditional industry, the start-up scene and SMEs. The cost-benefit evaluation has specifically shown that an open search infrastructure is expected to amortise in the fourth year. The report forecasts a considerable economic benefit of 4 to 5 billion euros in the first decade. 
The non-commercial, social benefits of an open web index were also analysed in detail across six relevant categories and were classified as very positive.

On 30 September 2024 the study results will be presented to the public for the first time. The presentation will be hosted by OWS.EU consortium partner Open Search Foundation alongside Mücke Roth & Company and with the support of the BMW Foundation Herbert Quandt in Munich.

About OpenWebSearch.EU

OpenWebSearch.EU is the first project the EU has funded (Horizon research and innovation programme, grant agreement No 101070014) to get tomorrow’s web search up and running. Since September 2022 the researchers are developing the core of an European Open Web Index as a basis for a new Internet Search in Europe. In addition, the project sets the foundation for an open and extensible European open Web Search and Analysis Infrastructure (OWSAI), based on Europe’s values, principles, legislation and standards.

Index intended to demonstrate alternatives to Google I Tagesspiegel.de

OWS.EU got introduced in a recent article in German online magazine Tagesspiegel.de

The magazine that counts 386.000 daily readers provides information across a wide range of topics including politics, economy, digital technologies, society and culture. 

On 9 August an article by journalist Stefan Mey titled “Index intended to demonstrate alternatives to Google – A quest for an open search engine“ was published. It depicts the mission and project scope of the OpenWebSearch.EU project and Initiative. 

The author points towards the current heavily restricted search engine market, which does not provide much room for independent search engine providers. In this context Mey references the current monopoly allegations against Google. 

OpenWebSearch.eu is mentioned as a potential open search alternative, paving the road for future search applications including vertical search and argument-search.

Whether the project succeeds seems to partially dependent on future partnerships and further project prolongation. 

Full article available to subscribers:https://www.tagesspiegel.de/OpenWebSearch

Events worth attending this autumn!

While we are still enjoying the sunny, hot summer days, we are also preparing a couple of interesting autumn events surrounding topics such as free & open web search (our main topic), open data and AI, as well as fundamental rights in the context of open web search and data protection.
We invite you to join the conversation, so mark your calendar for the following events you won’t want to miss:

  • #FWSD24 – FreeWebSearchDay is going into its second year with exciting interactive actions and events happening on 29 September and the surrounding days and week. More info and how you can partake and support this special day: https://freewebsearch.org/
  • Economy Study – As part of FreeWebSearchDay, we are offering an online presentation in cooperation with Mücke Roth & Company and BMW Foundation Herbert Quandt on 30 September. The topic: A comprehensive study on the market potential of OpenWebSearch.eu in Europe. The study is part of our third-party community programme.
    Sign-up to the event: https://gstoo.de/OpenWebSearch
  • #EBDVA – the European Big Data Value Forum takes place in Budapest, Hungary from 2-4 October this year. Our session “Web-data at your fingertips for Generative AI, Data Analytics and Search” is scheduled for 3 October at 15.30 CET: https://european-big-data-value-forum.eu/2024-edition/programme/
  •  #ossym24 – The 6th international OpenSearchSymposium takes place from 9-11 October at Leibniz Supercomputing Centre near Munich. Speakers include Roberto Viola – Director General, Communications Networks, Content and Technology, European Commission , Dr. Martin Andree – Media Scientist and Bestselling Author and Richard Socher – CEO at you.com. Participation is free, with 100 on-site spots available. The hybrid event will also be streamed. All infos and sign up link: https://opensearchfoundation.org/en/events-osf/ossym24/
  • EOSC Symposium – From 21-23 October the European Open Science Cloud Symposium sets the scene in Berlin, Germany. Join our Unconference session on „Findability in FAIR: Touchpoints between EOSC and Open Web Search“ on 22 October  from 17-18 CET: https://indico.cern.ch/event/1408259/timetable/?layout=room#20241021.detailed

To stay in the loop on further events and project updates, make sure to sign up to our quarterly newsletter right here.

Update from OWS.EU partner projects: Part 3

Building an Open Web Index does not only include technical challenges, but also legal and societal ones. To extend our R&D activities around Open Web Search, we initiated the OWS.EU Community Programme. In our first Third-party call we asked for contributions on legally compliant data gathering and identifying legal or economic aspects that enable or block the development and maintenance of an Open Web Index. The call opened in March 2023 and ended with the onboarding of six new partner projects in November 2023. This blogpost includes updates from two projects that address legal challenges of providing an Open Web Index: ALMASTIC and LOREN.

ALMASTIC: Legal Evaluation of Technical Aspects of the Open Web Index

The ALMASTIC project aims to legally secure the Open Web Index by subjecting its technical aspects to legal evaluation. Its goal is to identify obstacles and mitigate legal risks in the process of successful global dissemination.

After helping to draft the first version of the Open Web Index License (OWIL 1), a comprehensive analysis of relevant legislation, case law and applicable guidelines and academic literature has been performed, forming a solid basis for the future legal compliance of OpenWebSearch.EU. The examination focused on five key areas:

  1. liability for third-party content,
  2. copyright,
  3. data protection,
  4. cybersecurity, and
  5. data governance.

The team around Prof. Kai Erenli from the University of Applied Sciences BFI Vienna will use the remaining time of the project to finalise their analysis while keeping in mind that a final assessment is not always possible, as the legal situation in many relevant areas is currently highly dynamic and relevant legal acts have yet to be finalised or case laws identified.

More information about the ALMASTIC project.

LOREN: Legal Open European Web Index

The LOREN project seeks to provide a comprehensive analysis of the legal constraints and requirements for building and operating an Open Web Index. The project will specifically look into the legal implications of crawling, data storage and sharing as well as provide recommendations for building and operating an Open Web Index that complies with the European laws and regulations.

The team around the two lawyers Paul C. Johannes and Dr. Maxi Nebel compiled and analysed the laws and norms that are relevant to building and maintaining of an Open Web Index. Results are currently compiled into a legal opinion with actionable advice regarding crawling, searching, indexing, sharing of index and disclosure of data for scientific purposes.

Additionally, the LOREN team started to work on the implications of the right to de-referencing. Furthermore they are analysing existing open source and open data licenses in regard to the suitability for usage in an Open Web Index. In the next months the team will concentrate on providing their legal opinion with advice concerning selection and/or adaptation of open data licenses for the Open Web Index. In order to present a workable license the LOREN team has worked together with other projects from call #1 of the OWS.Eu Community Programme.

More information about the LOREN project.

Update from OWS.EU partner projects: Part 2

The OWS.EU Community Programme is an essential part of our work towards a European Open Web Search. The programme helps us to integrate new third-party project teams into the OWS.EU landscape and future R&D activities.

In November 2023 we successfully onboarded six new partner projects looking into technical, legal and economic research topics in support of a European Open Web Index. The projects were selected via our first Third-party call. Information on successful projects selected from our second and third open call will follow soon. This blogpost provides an update from two of the more technical projects from call #1 – LAW4OSAI and Open Console.

LAW4OSAI: License-Aware Web Crawling for Open Search AI 

The LAW4OSAI (License-Aware Web Crawling for Open Search AI) project deals with legal and technical aspects of content crawling and aims to enable license-aware crawling of web content by automatically identifying and retrieving content licenses. The team successfully developed a browser plugin to annotate a dataset for the detection of content licenses on websites and open sourced the code (https://github.com/LAW4OSAI/plugin-license-annotation). Furthermore, an algorithm to detect standard open licenses (like Common Creative licenses) on websites was created and the annotation of a dataset has started. The size of the dataset will increase in the remaining time of the project.

Currently the LAW4OSAI team calls for contributions to an online workshop series for researchers and practitioners that are interested in legal aspects of generative AI (https://www.utwente.nl/en/bms/law4osai/workshop/).

More information about the LAW4OSAI project

Open Console: Improving Knowledge about Websites

The Open Console project is implemented by Markov Solutions – a freelance business run by Mark Overmeer and Thao Phuong Nguyen. The goal of the project is to build an infrastructure (called Open Console) to share information about websites and thereby improve the availability and quality of produced knowledge.

In the current version of the Open Console, people can already create an account and log in to the console. They are able to generate their personal identities (to define different roles), as well as group identities (for cooperation or association). From that, ownership of  websites (or email, or domain name) can be verified.

In the remaining project lifetime, the Open Console team works on implementing other types of ownership proof and making the website production ready. Together with the OWS.EU partners University of Passau and SUMA-eV, the first service provided by Open Console will be implemented. This will be a learning path for the Open Web Index logging requirements and the design of the OC-third party interface specification.

More information about the Open Console project.