EU research power against Google’s dominance | ZDF heute

OpenWebSearch.eu was mentioned on the website of German newscast ZDF heute

Book author and journalist Stefan Mey wrote up a portrait on the OpenWebSearch.eu project, which has just entered its third year. The Horizon Europe funded project forms part of the Open Search Initiative initiated by Starnberg based Open Search Foundation. The organization has been alligning forces with 13 European research entities since September 2022 to attempt build a European Open Web Index.

In the article OSF chairman Dr. Stefan Voigt who also works as a researcher with consortium partner German Aerospace Center  is quoted as follows: “Our aim is to provide a directory of all content on the World Wide Web as a public service.”

The idea of a free and open web index should promote more diversity in the narrow search engine market. Currently roundabout 3.10 Billion URLs have been crawled, with the status being regularly updated here: https://openwebsearch.eu/the-project/status/

Read the ZDF heute article: https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/wissen/open-web-search-google-alternative-konkurrenz-monopol-100.html

 

From EU project to EU search engine | NKS DIT “Success Stories“ Yearbook

The National Contact Point Digital and Industrial Technologies (NKS DIT) of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research introduces the OpenWebSearch.EU project in their yearbook, which features “success stories“ from the Horizon Europe EU program.

With the purpose of presenting stories of particularly successful EU projects to the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the German public, this year’s volume features 12 flagship projects that have reached important milestones.
OpenWebSearch.eu is portrayed as an important undertaking to foster European digital sovereignty in alignment with ethical requirements, as the following statement from the entry underlines: “The collaborative, decentralized and interdisciplinary European approach makes a major contribution to a fair, open, diverse and free web.“
“This is a great recognition of our work to date,” says a delighted Prof Dr Michael Granitzer, holder of the Chair of Data Science and scientific coordinator of the EU project. “I also see it as a signal of how important open and transparent digital technologies are for the future of Europe. With our web index, we are creating a foundation on which new, promising AI applications can be built.”

2.7 billion URLs indexed in 185 languages

Over the past two years, the interdisciplinary research team coordinated by Professor Granitzer has developed an Open Web Index prototype. It is currently hosted via an infrastructure of four European supercomputing centers and is modelled with an open future so that new promising technologies such as AI applications can be taken into account. Moreover, different types of search engines could be set up, including vertical search engines that focus on special interest topics or argument search engines, which can help reduce confirmation bias in search results. The index prototype has so far “crawled” 2.7 billion URLs in 185 languages and comprises 400 tebibits, which is roughly equivalent to 191,000 pictures.

AI-driven web search in the focus of the coming project year

The project continues until end of August 2025. Next year, the team wants to develop ethical guidelines for the curation and establishment of the hosting infrastructure and explore options for its long-term funding. The focus will in addition be on the preparation of data for the use of AI-driven web searches. The research team is also aiming to further scale the index with the aim of covering a relevant part of the web and making the data usable in application scenarios for web search, AI and web data analysis.
“Our mission is to contribute to a fair, open, diverse and free web. We make the European economy and society less dependent on global digital players by enabling transparent and open access to web data – for independent search engines as well as for the analysis of web data and the use of AI,” explains Professor Granitzer.

Find the full project portrait via NKS DIT here:

https://www.nks-dit.de/aktuelles/news/erfolgsbroschuere_2024_nksdit_digitale_schluesseltechnologien

 

Europe 2.0 – upgrading Europe’s internet search capacity” | Horizon Magazine

A recent Horizon Magazine article portraits the OpenWebSearch.eu project and lay out why building a European Open Web Index (OWI) opens up multiple new opportunities for future web search and data retrieval and how it contributes to promoting the diverse European linguistic and cultural landscapes.

“We want to empower communities so that they can easily filter and find those parts of the web that are relevant to them,” says project leader Michael Granitzer, Professor of Data Science at the University of Passau.

Additionally, privacy & data protection are an integral part of the project.
This not only serves science & research teams, but also offers new possibilities for the Pan-European economy.

A European OWI centres around European laws and values and serves as a solid soil for tech startups and enterprises that appreciate digital sovereignty and open data culture.

Read the full article on Horizon Magazine online here.

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

“The dream of an open search engine” I Spektrum.de

OpenWebSearch.eu was portrayed in German science magazine Spektrum.de 

Read our short summary of the article highlighting the project goals and milestones:

The article is titled „The dream of an open search engine“.
What follows is a thorough look into why Europe desperately needs a web index of its own and how the OWS.EU project that is funded by Horizon Europe currently operates across six European countries in a collaborative manner.  The project comprises 14 partners – including Supercomputing Centres, Universities and Non-Profit & Tech Associations. The goal: Building a European Open Web Index prototype as a basis for European digital sovereignty.

„So far, 1.3 billion URLs in 185 languages, totaling 60 terabytes, have been crawled and indexed“ states OWS.EU project lead Michael Granitzer from the University of Passau in the article.

Quite a milestone, considering that the Horizon Europe funded project is currently only mid-term into its timeline and already taking on tangible shape.

Will OWS.EU create a Search Engine that can compete with existing giants such as Google and Bing?

The OWS.EU project will certainly also develop its own search offerings, but only as prototypes to show what is possible. The aim is not to compete directly with Google. “It’s about enabling diversity in the search market in the first place. We provide the search index that partners can use, whether commercially or non-commercially.” says Michael Granitzer.

A variety of search engine types could be implemented in the future, e.g. Vertical Search Engines that focus on special topics of interest or Argument-Search that can deliver pros and cons for specific search queries.

Even privacy-friendly downloadable index parts to allow custom-search could be an option.

But what’s more, is that the indexed data could be used to train AI, paving the way for conversational search and more.

 

The full article is available in German language for Spektrum.de subscribers only at: https://www.spektrum.de/news/openwebsearch-der-traum-einer-offenen-suchmaschine/2213413

 

„Re-orienting search engine research in information science” | JASIST Special Issue

The JASIST Special Issue on „Re-orienting search engine research in information science”, co-edited by Dirk Lewandowski, Jutta Haider, Olof Sundin, has now been published. It offers lots of reading material about Internet Search and Search Engines, including the article „Impact and Development of an Open Web Index for open web search“ that many OWS.EU consortium members co-wrote are now available in the JASIST Special Issue.

Find shortcuts to the articles here:

Editorial: Re-orienting search engine research in information science
(Dirk Lewandowski, Jutta Haider, Olof Sundin)

Impact and development of an Open Web Index for open web search
(Michael Granitzer et al.)

The influence of knowledge type and source reputation on preferences for website or video search results
(Georg Pardi, Steffen Gottschling, Yvonne Kammerer)

Virtuous search: A framework for intellectual virtue in online search
(Tim Gorichanaz)

Dark sides of artificial intelligence: The dangers of automated decision-making in search engine advertising
(Carsten D. Schultz, Christian Koch, Rainer Olbrich)

Is googling risky? A study on risk perception and experiences of adverse consequences in web search
(Helena Häußler, Sebastian Schultheiß, Dirk Lewandowski)

Towards improving user awareness of search engine biases: A participatory design approach
(Monica Lestari Paramita, Maria Kasinidou, Styliani Kleanthous, Paolo Rosso, Tsvi Kuflik, Frank Hopfgartner)

Making the invisible visible: Critical discourse analysis as a tool for search engine research
(Renee Morrison)

The elusive search engine: How search engine use is reflected in survey reports
(Cecilia Andersson, Olof Sundin)

Shaping information and knowledge on climate change technologies: A cross-country qualitative analysis of carbon capture and storage results on Google search
(Jussara Rowland, Sergi López-Asensio, Ataberk Bagci, Ana Delicado, Ana Prades)

“Join the drive for a new open European infrastructure for web search” I CORDIS

The Community Research and Development Information Service (CORDIS) is the European Commission’s primary source of results from the projects funded by the EU’s framework programmes for research and innovation, from FP1 to Horizon Europe.

OWS.EU – as Horizon Europe project – is currently calling on third-parties to contribute innovations and infrastructure to help further develop the Open Web Index. The Calls have been published on the CORDIS website and they are closing on April 4th 17 CET:

https://cordis.europa.eu/article/id/449996-join-the-drive-for-a-new-open-european-infrastructure-for-web-search?WT.mc_id=exp

“People to Watch: Dieter Kranzlmüller” I HPCwire

“The OpenWebSearch.eu project and the Open Search Foundation — both founded and based in Europe — come from a background of open source, open data, open access, and open science. These values have always resonated with my academic career, but of course also with LRZ as an institution“, says Dieter Kranzlmüller – Chair of the Board of Directors, Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ) – in a recent interview on HPCwire. Being named a “person to watch in 2024“ by the renowned computer-centred news platform, he was asked to share about LRZ‘s role in the OpenWebSearch.eu project. As one of the 14 consortium partners LRZ plays a key role in providing a stable infrastructure as one of Germany‘s top notch data centres.

Read more about LRZ‘s European scope in the full interview:
https://www.hpcwire.com/people-to-watch-2024-dieter-kranzlmuller/

 

“Funding of up to 150,000 euros“ | Informationsdienst Wissenschaft

The German research outlet idw (Informationsdienst Wissenschaft) is the go-to news platform for staying up to date on cutting-edge science updates, publications, projects and topics. The members-centric platform caters to more than 43,000 subscribers. 

With ows.eu consortium partner “University of Passau” being an active member, idw shared about the recent OWS.EU Third-Party Open Calls 2 and 3.

The ows.eu project, part of Horizon Europe, is currently calling on third parties to contribute innovations and infrastructure to help further develop the Open Web Index.

https://idw-online.de/en/news828851

Short Interview with Stefan Voigt at NGI Forum 2023

In November 2023, the annual NGI Forum took place in Brussels and launched a new Q&A video series with NGI-related Horizon Europe-funded project managers. Among the interviewees was Stefan Voigt, the chairman of the executive board at Open Search Foundation (OSF), one of the 14 OWS.EU consortium partners. At the NGI forum, he got to network with a variety of project stakeholders while learning about some really interesting projects under the NGI umbrella.

You can watch his Q&A session on EU Video, the official ActivityPub video platform of the EU institutions, bodies and agencies.

If you want to learn a bit more, you can also revisit the plenary session 3, which was called “Open Web Search and Large Language Models and Beyond: Challenges and opportunities for Europe“, moderated by OSF chairwoman Christine Plote. Among the five panelists was Michael Granitzer from OWS.EU partner University of Passau.

You can watch the full session here online (start at roughly 2.55 minutes in).