We are used to thinking of search engines as simple tools, neutral portals of access to the vast world of online information. The reality, however, is much more complex and stratified. The European initiative of theOpen Web Index (scheduled for June 2025) does not arise only from concerns about the quality of the results offered by Google or Bing, but is part of a broader project of continental strategic autonomy.
Digital infrastructure is now comparable to what railroads or power grids once were: essential elements of national sovereignty and economic security. When an entire continent depends on technologies developed and controlled elsewhere, the implications go far beyond the annoyance of finding too much advertising in search results.
The issue touches on Europe's ability to protect its economic interests, influence technological development according to its values, and ensure that information circulates according to democratically defined standards, not by the proprietary algorithms of American companies. We had anticipated it for some time: economic and geopolitical balances will end up break the internet into pieces who will have much more difficulty communicating with each other: the dream of the “global village”, for now, is over.
Not just quality, but control and values
The Open Web Index project, supported by a consortium that includes universities, research centers such as CERN and technology companies, aims to build not a search engine, but something more fundamental: a web index accessible to all, similar to a digital library from which to draw to build alternative services. If today small search engines must rely on American giants to function, tomorrow genuinely European solutions could emerge, calibrated to the languages, cultures and regulations of the continent.
This approach opens up interesting scenarios not only for market diversification, but also for the representation of information according to different sensitivities. A search engine based on European values could privilege privacy over advertising profiling, or guarantee greater visibility to content in languages other than English, today strongly underrepresented in the global digital ecosystem.
Opportunities and risks of a fragmented web
The consequences of this initiative could be profound and not all of them predictable. On one side, competition could spur innovation and improve services for all users, including those of Google and Bing. On the other, there is a risk of a fragmentation of the web, with increasingly separate and impermeable ecosystems, as is already partly happening with the RunNet of Russian origin, or with China and its “Great Firewall”.
As we were telling ourselves in this article which hypothesized a scenario where Google shuts down, dependence on single platforms creates systemic vulnerabilities. A more distributed and resilient internet could be more stable, but also more complex for end users to navigate.
Open Web Index: The Long Road to Autonomy
The first test of the Open Web Index will provide a petabyte of content (about a fifth of the final goal), still limited compared to the indexes of the American giants. The road to a real alternative is long and paved with technical, economic and political challenges.
The crucial question is not whether Europe will be able to build a technical infrastructure that is up to the task, but whether it will be able to translate it into attractive and useful services for end users. History is full of technically valid projects but unable to attract a sufficient audience, from the experiment Quaero to many other European initiatives in the digital field.
The June 6 meeting is just the beginning of a long game. A game in which Europe is not just trying to improve the online search experience, but is redefining its place in a digital world that has so far been dominated by non-European rules and actors. A game that, for better or worse, is not just about Google, but about the very shape of our digital future.
