Google Search just lost a key market to a rival you’ve probably never heard of

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Google and the European Union don’t often see eye to eye. The company has, on many occasions, been on the EU’s radar for various reasons: a massive five-billion-dollar antitrust fine years ago and more recently, a warning against Gemini getting preferential treatment on Android. Now, the EU has decided to stop using Google as the default search engine on official systems.

The European Parliament will start using Qwant as the default search engine on its in-house computers beginning on June 4, per an email seen by Politico .

The email further states that the decision to ditch Google and use Qwant was made “in line with the Parliament’s commitment to digital sovereignty and the protection of users’ personal data.” To that end, the European Commission is also expected to unveil a tech-sovereignty package aimed at reducing dependency on foreign tech companies.

Qwant is a French search engine that advertises itself as a privacy-oriented product and claims not to track its users or sell data to advertisers. It also offers features that Google does not: Users can completely disable the AI features in Qwant search and turn off sponsored content on the homepage.

Once the switch from Google takes place, searches from the address bar of browsers on Parliament’s systems will automatically use Qwant as the default search engine instead of Google. However, officials will still be able to use any search engine they want or set a different search engine as the default.

The EU’s push to phase out reliance on US-based tech firms has been in the works for quite some time. France has already stopped using Microsoft Teams and Zoom, and European lawmakers have been pressuring the EU to phase out foreign-made technology.

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