First third-party partners finalise their projects to bolster Open Web Search - OpenWebSearch.eu – Promoting Europe‘s Independence in Web Search

In November 2024, the first third-party partners completed their projects funded under the Community Programme of OpenWebSearch.EU and delivered crucial results to bolster an European Open Web Search.

The Community Programme plays an essential role in the Horizon Europe project OpenWebSearch.EU. It strengthens community activities around Open Search and allows the integration of new aspects and expertise through a cascade funding scheme. In March 2023 the OpenWebSearch.EU project issued its first open call that asked for contributions tolegally compliant data gathering and identifying legal or economic aspects that enable or block the development and maintenance of an Open Web Index. A team of experts chose six third-party partners to realise their project plans, ranging from legal assessments to the development of software tools, with funding from the OpenWebSearch.EU project. Three partners recently finalized their work and presented the results to the OpenWebSearch.EU consortium. Another three projects were granted a prolongation until the end of March 2025.

Here is an overview of the projects which are already completed

Project MRC

The MRC project delivered a thorough market potential assessment of the Open Web Search Initiative and an Open Web Index, aimed at creating a European open web search infrastructure. Therefore, Mücke Roth & Company (MRC)evaluated economic and societal impacts, using both top-down and bottom-up methods to ensure a comprehensive analysis across various scenarios, including qualitative feedback from future users. The final report presents a variety of significant benefits of an Open Web Index with broad applicability across Europe and also recommendations for strategic directions and business model adjustments to optimize economic and societal benefits. The team completed their work and the project in April 2024 and presented results to the public in September 2024. The study can be downloaded here: https://openwebsearch.eu/the-project/research-results/market-potential-assessment-of-an-european-open-web-index/

Project LOREN

The LOREN project analysed the legal constraints and requirements of crawling, storing, aggregating, enriching, and sharing web data operationally in an Open Web Index. The conducted research focuses on the legal aspects of building and operating an Open Web Index, including data protection, copyright, and intellectual property rights. As a result, a report was provided with a comprehensive analysis of the legal constraints and requirements for building and operating an Open Web Index with actionable advice. The project was completed in September 2024.

Project LAW4OSAI

The goal of the LAW4OSAI project was to enable license-aware crawling of content, particularly text and images, by automatically identifying and retrieving content licenses. The LAW4OSAI team investigated technical and legal aspects of the topic. Furthermore, they annotated a data set for the detection of content licenses and developed a resource-efficient Python library that is able to not only detect licenses on webpages but also map those licenses to assets on the webpage to distinguish, e.g., between different licenses for images and text on the same page. Last but not least, a framework to assess content licenses with regard to their compatibility with the training of Machine Learning models was developed and popular open licenses (like Creative Commons) were reviewed based on this framework. The project ended in November 2024 after an extension of two months. More: https://www.utwente.nl/en/bms/law4osai/.

The following projects received a prolongation until the end of March 2025

Project Open Console

The goal of the Open Console project is to build an infrastructure (called Open Console) to share information about websites and thereby improve the availability and quality of knowledge about websites. The team developed a production-ready version of the Open Console, where website owners can create an account and log in to the console. Different types of ownership proofs were implemented as well as a demo service for the Open Web Crawler “OWLer” that was developed in the OpenWebSearch.EU project in order to create the Open Web Index. With this, Open Console enables the communication between the OpenWebSearch.EU project and owners of websites that were crawled by the OWLer. The project was extended for six months with additional funding in order to build another example service for Open Console, called “Lethe”, that will help to handle take-down requests.

Project LISA

The LISA project created a legal framework for the development and operation of an Open Web Index. First, the team defined what constitutes illegal content and established the legal duties for operators of an Open Web Index. Legal requirements for take-down requests, including those for criminal content, IP infringements, and data protection were set out. Additionally, the ownership of digital content and of the Open Web Index was clarified and the legal framework necessary for sharing the index was created. Furthermore, the team drafted an End User License Agreement (EULA) anda comprehensive legal framework for the Open Web Index, including governance structures and guidelines as well as best practices for its operation. The project was extended until March 2025 with additional funding to explore and finalise different licensing models for the Open Web Index.

Project ALMASTIC

The ALMASTIC project conducted a comprehensive review of legislative norms relevant to the development and implementation of the Open Web Index. The analysis encompassed a total of 50 regulatory instruments at the European Union level. These regulations were assessed to determine their potential impact on the OpenWebSearch.EU project, with findings categorized as low, medium, or high impact. The medium and high impact regulations were prioritized for more in-depth evaluation, focusing on key areas like copyright, data protection or cybersecurity. Furthermore, a final review regarding the Open Web Index Licence developed within the ALMASTIC project was provided. The project was extended for six months with additional funding to conduct a more focused legal framework assessment and broaden the Open Web Index License.

The members of the OpenWebSearch.EU project are very satisfied with the outcome of the first call from the Community Programme. Ursula Gmelch from the Open Search Foundation manages the OpenWebSearch.EU community. She explains:

“The OpenWebSearch.eu project lives from its community. Our third-party partners in particular contribute tremendously on many of the aspects that are most important to the OpenWebSearch.eu project. They deliver, in a short time, really insightful and valuable results that we use as building blocks for the basis of European Open Web Search. From economic to legal and technical aspects – the results will help us make well-informed decisions and make great strides forward. We are happy to continue this approach with the extension of three of our third-party projects. This will allow them to deepen their research and help us push Open Web Search substantially forward.”