„Google owns the queries, but Europe wants its search infrastructure back“ I EU Perspectives

In a recent article on EU Perspectives, the OpenWebSearch.eu project is mentioned alongside European Search Perspective as one of the promising initiatives to reclaim sovereign access to the web. The current situation is one of dependence from US Big Tech companies, especially in the domain of search services. The article claims that 90 % of search engine queries in Europe are done via Google, followed by Bing. Alternative search engines such as Ecosia and Qwant struggle to keep up. 

Building a European open-source search infrastructure could be a crucial pivot in the quest for digital sovereignty. 

“A common web data infrastructure would allow European innovators to build higher-level services faster, in a sovereign manner”, says OWS spokesperson Stefan Voigt.

To dive deeper, read the full article here:

https://euperspectives.eu/2025/11/is-open-search-the-path-to-european-digital-sovereignity/

OWS.EU Partner in Focus: Open Search Foundation

The Open Search Foundation e.V. is a European non-profit initiative dedicated to enabling independent, transparent, and democratic access to online information. Working in collaboration with research institutions, data centres, and other partners, the foundation promotes open web search as a public good. Its core activities include advancing search engine research, fostering cooperation, and supporting education in the field.

Dr. Stefan Voigt is Chairman and CEO of the Open Search Foundation e.V. and Coordinator of the OpenSearch@DLR project. Together with his team (Ursula Gmelch, Community Manager and Katrin Wellenberg, Science Communications Manager), he leads efforts to develop open infrastructures, such as the Open Web Index. These initiatives aim to promote innovation, support European digital sovereignty, and advance ethical and reliable search systems and AI applications.

Dr. Stefan Voigt

Please describe your organization’s tasks in the project. What is your field of expertise that you bring to the project?

Stefan: The Open Search Foundation has a networking, communication, and coordination role. We coordinate the work package on dissemination, exploitation, and communication (DEC), as well as the community building and outreach tasks. All in all, we network across different disciplines and bring the community together.

How is the project progressing? Which major milestones did you achieve?

Stefan: We think that the Open Web Search Project is processing very well. All the major technical and organizational goals and milestones were met. Together with our partners, we managed to bring together a large community of supporters and contributors, including computing centers, SMEs, and other organizations that use the Web Index and support the building and growing of the use of web data. The major milestone was the launch of the pilot Web index that the technical partners contributed to a lot. At the same time, we managed to engage several hundred people interested in this infrastructure and how it can be used.

What are the challenges you have been facing (regarding your tasks)?

Stefan: The biggest challenge that we faced from the beginning of this project was that this idea of a federated open web search infrastructure is not known and not yet well understood by many people, all the way from the layman on the street up to the policymakers. This means the challenge was to have people understand that not only a big hyperscaler from the US can build search engines and the underlying web index, but that it’s also possible to do this in a cooperative and federated manner across European computing centers and to have people cooperate and actually build such a web search ecosystem.

Which milestones do you plan to achieve in the remaining months?

Stefan: Since we’ve already reached the nominal end-of-project time and we’re currently in a six month extension phase. As said before, all major tech and non-tech milestones have already been reached. Now we use the remaining project time to further spread the word, wrap-up the developments, and get the idea transported towards policy- and decision makers at European Member State, European Commission, and Parliament level, so the idea can really make it to the awareness of the relevant people. In this way, it has a chance to be taken further, grown, and operationally implemented in Europe.

What makes the OWS project special to you?

Stefan: The OpenWebSearch.eu project is the backbone project of the European OpenSearch initiative. The OpenSearchFoundation has been working for many years to inspire such a project in Europe – a project that’s very close to the DNA of the OpenSearchFoundation and is actually the core of what we always wanted to achieve and what we will try to work on future.

Do you already have plans for the time after the project ends?

Stefan: Yes, of course. The project was an important means to get the idea of a federated web data infrastructure and open web search piloted and to demonstrate that it works. Now we have to take it to scale and make sure it gets further funding in European member states as well as from European funding sources, to further grow and scale the infrastructure and its uptake. This is what we will be working on in the coming months and years to help strengthen European digital sovereignty.

Thank you for the interview!

Read more about the Open Search Foundation: Open Search Foundation e.V.

OWS.EU Partner in Focus: The Graz University of Technology

As a partner in the OpenWebSearch.Eu project, Graz University of Technology, contributes its interdisciplinary expertise through the Cognitive and Digital Science Lab. CoDiS Lap explores the intersection of computer science, cognitive psychology, and human factors, focusing on digital literacy, decision-making, and human-centered design.

Within the project, Prof. Dr. Christian Guetl, as head of CoDiS Lab and Postdoctoral Researcher Dr. Alexander Nussbaumer, develop search applications together with their team – Chiara Ruß-Baumann (MSc in psychology), Sebastian Gürtl (PhD student in computer science), Felix Holz (BSc in computer science), and Daniel Scharf (Bsc in computer science) and ensure the integration of ethical and societal principles such as trust, privacy, and quality into the open web search infrastructure.

Thanks to Christian and Alexander for taking the time to share your insights with us.

Portrait of Christian Guetl (@ TU Graz)Portrait of Alexander Nussbaumer (@ TU Graz)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please describe your organization’s tasks in the project. What is your field of expertise that you bring to the project?

Our main tasks in the OpenWebSearch.eu project is (a) to take care of creating applications using the Open Web Index data, and (b) coordinating work on ethical, legal, and societal aspects related to the creation and operation of the Open Web Index. The search applications should demonstrate how the Open Web Index is used for special-purpose search applications. The elaboration of ethical, legal, and societal aspects is needed to understand and adhere to them.

How is the project progressing? Which major milestones did you achieve?

In order to support the application development, the MOSAIC search framework has been developed that constitutes an out-of-the-box search engine that can deal with web index data downloaded from the Open Web Index. Furthermore, it can be used as a backbone to create more complex own search applications. For taking care of the ethical and legal aspects, a framework of technical-organisational has been elaborated that advises index creators, operators, and users, how to adhere to ethical and legal standards and mitigate respective risks.

What are the challenges you have been facing (regarding your tasks)?

The most demanding challenges are dealing with the legal and ethical constraints when creating and sharing web data and index shards. The main difficulty arises from the fact that third-party web content is downloaded, processed and shared with the public. However, web content can contain sensible and problematic information, such as personal data, copyright content, illegal data, or disinformation. Hence, various European laws have to be taken in consideration, such as copyright laws, data protection, or criminal law.

Which milestones do you plan to achieve in the remaining months?

The final milestones mainly include application demonstrators that showcase and document how to make use of and benefit from the Open Web Index. This should stimulate others to create their own Applications based on web data and the Open Web Index. Furthermore, summaries will be created that explain ethical and legal situations related to the creation, operation, sharing, and usage of the Open Web Index.

What makes the OWS project special to you?

Already in the early 2000s we had a first project to work on an alternative search engine. It was already at that time a distributed system and enabled in a flexible way to crawl web sites and build an index to be used by different applications. Since that time we saw a great value for an open search index and an open search infrastructure. The OWS project finally not only realized this idea but also scaled it up to a useful source for search applications, AI tools and research. Moreover, development on the global scale has shown that digital sovereignty on the European level is key for our economic and scientific landscape.

Do you already have plans for the time after the project ends?

Due to the collaborative effort to keep the infrastructure operative and providing up-to-date web index slices, we want to continue our effort to further improve the MOSAIC search framework and work on further search applications. The main interest is on science search applications and applications for Austria’s sovereignty on digital infrastructure, in particular working on Web search independence and data infrastructure for emergency management.

logo of TU Graz

Read more about Graz University of Technology: https://openwebsearch.eu/partners/tu-graz/