“Does it always have to be Google or Bing? With the OpenWebSearch project, the EU wants to protect its sovereignty on the Internet. The goal is a freely accessible web directory that feeds diverse search engines and language models and should trigger a boom in new web services.

Arne Grävemeyer reports in the 9/2023 issue of c’t about the openwebsearch.eu project, in which the Open Search Foundation is significantly involved. The article takes a detailed look at the project, its background and future development. Michael Granitzer (University of Passau, OSF and project lead of openwebsearch.eu), Stefan Voigt (Open Search Foundation, DLR), Christian Gütl (Graz University of Technology) and Phil Höfer (SuMa e.V./MetaGer) have their say.

“But what could you do with a large web index if it were freely available to the public? One could build alternative search engines or specialised search services according to selected topics. Users would have free choice and could better protect their private user profiles. Linguists could use the data pool of a large web index to follow how our language is developing, and sociologists could observe how we interact with each other in the social media. Web services could use it to look for clues to incipient pandemics or other catastrophic events and thus build an early warning system.”

“We are not a European Google,” says Michael Granitzer, Chair of Data Science at the University of Passau, who is coordinating the OpenWebSearch project. He says the project is not about building a large search engine, but much more fundamentally about establishing an infrastructure that search engines and other services can later work with. Google’s size is certainly out of reach at the beginning. “It will be more like Wikipedia, which started with a small core compared to large publishers and then grew continuously.”

“Even at the start of the project, and thus before the hype around ChatGPT, the partners considered the Open Web Index, with its focus on European content and languages, as a data pool for specialised language models. New search engines could also immediately use these models as an interface for search queries. “Users are usually not looking for links, but for answers to their questions or even suggested solutions,” says Gütl. That speaks for the use of chatbots, he says.”

“In terms of Europe’s digital sovereignty, the Open Web Index can certainly be seen as a critical infrastructure. The project partners hope that it will create transparent structures on the web. The envisaged European web index promises more plurality and hopefully benefits above all those who simply provide the best and most reliable information on their websites.”

Online version of the article (paywall) at heise.de

Links to Open Web Search, compiled by c’t: ct.de/y6sw

“Google dominates internet search, now an EU project is trying to build an alternative with ‘European values’. Can it succeed?” – The SZ reported on our EU project OpenWebSearch.eu in the business section. Mirjam Hauck spoke with Michael Granitzer about it. He researches and teaches at the University of Passau and heads the 8.5 million euro project.

“We can’t compete with Google,” Granitzer says, dampening expectations. It is difficult to displace the top dogs. And the budget of 8.5 million euros is “a drop in the ocean”. By way of comparison: Microsoft has invested ten billion dollars in the AI company OpenAI and its bot Chat-GPT alone. That is about 1200 times the budget of the EU project.”

The goal of Open Web Search is to eventually cover 50 to 60 percent of the websites that Google also has in its index. That would be about 500 to 600 billion web pages. Because, as Michael Granitzer explains it: “More than 50 percent is a critical mass. If it works with that, you can also cover 100 per cent with more computer resources.”

Granitzer does not believe that they are too late with the OWI. “It’s not about building a competitor to Google or Microsoft, but first about making web data more easily accessible,” says the professor. This data could also be used to train CI models. In addition, “we simply have to make progress on this topic in Europe”.

For Granitzer, his project is also about whether a different advertising market and thus different business models are possible than those dominated by Google. If users had several search engines to choose from, there would be no such problems, says Granitzer. “Oligopolies or monopolies have never been drivers of innovation.” An example: “Currently, we are limited to seeing a list of ten links, of which we look at three, and there is a lot of advertising, which is increasing. I’m already asking myself the question: is this really web search?”

 

Online Version of the article at sueddeutsche.de (German, Paywall)

The EU project OpenWebSearch.EU, of which the Open Search Foundation is a partner, starts with the first Third-Party-Call. Research teams from science and research can apply now with their proposals on legal, economic and technical aspects of Open Search. They have the opportunity to participate in the development of a free and open search index and to become part of the Open Search Community.

The OpenWebSearch.EU project consortium is eager to onboard new third-party project teams in the OpenWebSearch.eu landscape and integrate them into the future activities for sustainable Research and Development. Candidates for third-party funded projects should address the closely related topics of the project. They should aim to extend and enrich the existing R&D activities as well as suggesting new ones which are complementary to the project objectives.

The first call consists of two tracks:

Track 1:
Conceptual contributions on legal or economic aspects of Open Search

Building an Open Web Index (OWI) does not only include technical challenges, but also legal and societal ones, especially when considering recent EU legislation like the Digital Service Act or the Digital Market Act. Furthermore, challenges for new business models or significant changes in the search engine market arise. The consortium seeks for two possible kinds of studies:

Legal Studies to analyse and understand legal constraints and requirements for building and operating an OWI, which includes, but is not limited to

  • (i) compilation and analysis of the laws and norms that are relevant to building and maintaining an OWI,
  • (ii) legal assessment of technical and non-technical prevention mechanism,
  • (iii) legal assessment of the implications of the right to de-referencing for an OWI or
  • (iv) analysis of existing open source and open data licenses in regard to the suitability for usage in an OWI.

Economic Studies for setting up and maintaining an OWI as public European infrastructure. This includes, but is not limited to studies for analysing and estimating the costs associated with setting up, operating and maintaining a distributed open web index infrastructure across Europe and analysing and estimating the market potential and economic impact of such an infrastructure.

Track 2:
Technical approaches to legally compliant data acquisition considering societal constraints:

Web crawling is the predominant method for web search engines to gather content for their index. However, webmaster and content owners have only limited control over the crawling process via mostly proprietary services. OpenWebSearch.eu is looking for concepts and approaches for opening the proprietary components and provide webmasters and content owners with more control over the crawling process and the usage of their content. Envisioned solutions should be technical in nature, including new metadata schemata/ontologies, algorithms / services for collecting website metadata, services and tools for webmaster and content owners to define legal constraints for crawling as well as open datasets and machine learning models for analysing and filtering web pages during the crawling process.

Dates and Modalities
  • Opening date: 1st March 2023
  • Closing date: 28th of April 2023, 17:00
  • Notification date: 30th June 2023
  • Start of projects: 1st August 2023

Successful applications can request funding between 25,000 and 120,000 EUR in this first call for a funding period of up to 12 months.

In particular, the call is targeting smaller companies (e.g. SMEs, start-ups), individual innovators, individual researchers or research teams (e.g. doctoral or post-doctoral researchers) from renowned universities. Eligible applicants are individuals residing in EU Member States or Horizon Europe Associated Countries, or organisations registered in EU Member States or Horizon Europe Associated Countries.

Find more info and the proposal package for download on the project website: openwebsearch.eu/call1

First EU project on Open Web Search launches third-party call – An invitation to advance R&D for a new Internet Search in Europe

OpenWebSearch.EU – a consortium of 14 research partners – is open for third-party proposals to help building an open and independent Web-index (OWI) based on European values. The first call addresses business and research partners to submit their applications in two tracks from March 1st until April 28th, 2023.

“We look forward to joining forces with new partners to advance the idea of an Open Web Index, built in a cooperative spirit across Europe. This call is an excellent opportunity to widen the scope and enrich our R&D activities for the internet search of tomorrow,“ says Stefan Voigt, CEO of the Open Search Foundation (OSF).

In particular, the call is targeting SMEs or start-ups, individual innovators and researchers or research teams. Third-party candidates should drive research closely related to the topics addressed in the project. Moreover, they should aim at enriching the existing R&D activities as well as suggesting new ones, in line with the project goals and aims.

“Building such an Open Web Index faces not only technical challenges. There are also legal and societal issues, especially when we consider recent EU legislations such as the Digital Service Act or the Digital Market Act.”, explains Dr. Megi Sharikadze, Team lead Research Coordination and Support at Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ), one of the consortium partners.

Thus, the project consortium calls for contributions in two tracks:

Track 1 includes studies on legal or economic aspects of Open Search. This covers topics, such as legal constraints and requirements of crawling, storing, enriching or sharing web-data, but also the analysis of cost-benefit of an Open Web Index infrastructure across Europe or of market potential and economic impact.

Track 2 calls for technical concepts for legally compliant data acquisition and processing, considering also societal constraints. This includes contributions, such as vocabularies, metadata schemata or ontologies for expressing/defining legal constraints on web page usage or open datasets and machine learning models for analysing web pages.

In this first call of three, successful applications can request funding between 25,000 and 120,000 EUR for a period of up to 12 months. Members of the consortium as well as external experts will review the applications. Eligible are individuals as well as organizations residing in EU Member States or in Horizon Europe Associated Countries. The third-party projects will be funded under the OpenWebSearch.eu Community Program. All awardees will be essential part of ongoing and future R&D activities of Open Web Search Community.

Applications are accepted via email. Detailed information can be found at: https://openwebsearch.eu/call1

About the project

OpenWebSearch.EU is the first funding project by the EU to get tomorrow’s web search up and running. 14 renowned European research centers – including the Open Search Foundation (OSF) – kicked-off the project in September 2022. Over the next three years, the researchers will develop the core of a European Open Web Index (OWI). In addition, they will set the foundation for an open and extensible European Open Web Search and Analysis Infrastructure (OWSAI), based on Europe’s values, legislation and standards. The project receives funding of 8,5 million Euros from the European Union’s Horizon research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 101070014.

About Horizon Europe

Horizon Europe is the EU’s key funding programme for research and innovation. It aims to build a knowledge- and innovation-based society and a competitive economy while contributing to sustainable development. The programme aims at implementing the European Commission’s guidelines.

 

“With a market share of over 90 percent, Google is regularly the number one search engine in Europe. Since 2004, “googling” has been officially listed as a verb in the dictionary and stands for searching or researching on the Internet with the application of the subsidiary of the US umbrella company Alphabet. As the gateway for a large number of Europeans and citizens worldwide, Google not only opens up information, but also helps determine their view of the Internet and the things depicted on it.” …

The full blog article at California18 can be found here: https://california18.com/missing-link-open-web-index-to-make-europe-independent-in-searching/9087352023/

OpenWebSearch.EU has kicked-off with a consortium meeting in Berlin. 46 representatives of the project partners got together in a hybrid meeting format in September to exchange ideas and make plans for the successful execution of the project.