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Posted on 06/18/2026 10:17:56 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
The European Parliament will switch to French search engine Qwant from Google (GOOGL.O), it said on Wednesday, underscoring Europe's push to reduce its reliance on U.S. technology in favour of local alternatives.
The European Commission will later on Wednesday announce measures on chips, cloud computing services and AI as part of its "Buy and Use European" drive.
"From 4 June 2026, Qwant will become the default search engine on the European Parliament's Microsoft Edge and Mozilla Firefox browsers," a Parliament spokesperson said in an email.
The change will be applied automatically, though users will still be able to select alternative search engines. "It is part of a larger framework of actions aimed at reducing EP reliance on non-EU digital tools and promoting European-based, privacy-focused services," the spokesperson said. The Parliament has 720 lawmakers, along with thousands of assistants and administrative staff. Euractiv first reported the switch.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
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The Mozilla Firefox (my main browser) default search engine is Google, and I am pretty sure they get some funding from Google in return. I’m pretty sure Firefox needs the funding to survive. Removing Google as the default may reduce the funding, putting Firefox in jeopardy.
Is this French search engine going to provide replacement funding to Mozilla to keep Firefox alive? Or are the French a bunch of freeloaders?
“ It is part of a larger framework of actions aimed at reducing EP reliance on non-EU digital tools and promoting European-based, privacy-focused services,”
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Gee, EU and “privacy-focused” are oxymoronic.
Just like how European Parliament and legislative initiative are oxymoronic. This is a parliament with no power to write any laws.
European AI independence, the timeline:
2026 - Everyone on X agrees we must build our own AI
2027 - EU AI Sovereignty Taskforce formed
2028 - Feasibility study on a 0.5GW data center in Latvia
2029 - Give €100 million to Mistral to purchase GPUs
2030 - Mistral releases a frontier model that answers only in French2031 - Declare full independence from American AI— Matthias Schmidt (@eurofounder) June 15, 2026
The EU's great contribution to the internet was forcing everyone to constantly keep accepting or declining cookies. What an absolute annoyance.
This reminds me of Canada and the EU talking about building an alternative to Starlink for Internet access in remote areas.
It’s laughable at best to think either group has any remote chance of building a Starlink alternative.
Canada doesn’t even have a launch facility; the EU has a launch facility but has never shown the ability to launch at the rate necessary to create a Starlink alternative in the next 10-15 years at a minimum.
“Gee, EU and “privacy-focused” are oxymoronic.”
Beyond oxymoronic, they monitor everything you write and they will arrest you if you say anything derogatory about any of their sacred cows - politicians, Muslims, gays etc.
So they’re switching to Bing.
,,, even if they did it would be cheaper to launch from French Guyana. You shop around for this sort of service.
The ironic part is that if Canada and the EU hope to build a Starlink competitor, they would likely use SpaceX to launch their satellites, simply because Starlink and launch on a more rapid basis and far cheaper than either one of them.
How are the French "freeloaders" for not paying for something they don't use or want?
I use Firefox, but I've switched its default search to DuckDuckGo.
Yeah, the starlink launches are like a bus service: if you miss one, another will be along momentarily.
CC
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