Reset Digital for Good I Fighting the Search Monopoly With an Open Source Index: An Interview With Michael Granitzer From OpenWebSearch
In a recent interview with Reset Digital for Good, our OpenWebSearch.eu project leader Michael Granitzer gave insights into why the already available pilot of the Open Web Index (OWI) is an essential cornerstone of European digital sovereignty.
“Our mission is to break up the silo of a single search engine. We’re doing this by crawling the web, collecting web pages and preparing them to be consumed by search engines. Preparing them involves cleaning advertisements and navigation links, then extracting the main content. This index can be used by individuals or organisations to build their own search engines.” he states.
But Granitzer argues beyond traditional web search, which in itself is shifting more and more towards generative and agentic AI solutions.
“…In an ideal scenario, the AI model is running on my machine and controlling my data. It’s a tool that helps me, conducts searches on my behalf and understands what I want to do. I’m talking about small language models rather than large language models. A model that helps me search, aggregate and synthesise information based on search endpoints that I choose.” he argues.
A powerful web index as part of a larger web data infrastructure is a non-negotiable in that sense.
Read the full interview here:
