The European Parliament has taken the step that millions of Europeans do not dare to take: leaving the Google search engine.

Europe has decided to let itself depend on the US in technology and is already taking real measures to achieve the long-awaited digital sovereignty. According to Politico, one of these measures will come into effect tomorrow and consists of something very specific: saying goodbye to the Google search engine.

What is happening. According to an internal email to which Politico has had access, as of Thursday, June 4, "Qwant will replace Google as the default search engine on the European Parliament's computers." The reason for this change is to continue "Parliament's commitment to digital sovereignty and the protection of users' personal data."

Why it is important. The European Union has realized (too late) that the US is not the reliable partner it thought, and that depending on its technology is a problem. Changing the search engine on parliament's computers is a symbolic measure, in the sense that it is one of the easiest to execute and will not have a real impact on technological independence, but it is important to send a message: it is possible.

Qwant. It is a search engine that focuses on privacy protection, in fact its slogan is "the browser that knows nothing about you." Qwant does not store search history or resell browsing data, has an extension for Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari and comes with built-in AI to summarize web pages. And most importantly, it is European, specifically French.

Yes, but. When an MEP searches from the address bar in the browser of one of the parliament's computers, Qwant will be the default search engine. However, they will be able to both access Google to search and change the settings to make it the default search engine. That is, there is no prohibition or block to use Google or any other search engine.

More measurements. A few days ago we learned that the European Union is preparing a “technological sovereignty package” with four key measures to reduce its dependence on the United States. These measures focus on four critical areas:

- Cloud: audits and stress tests on suppliers.

- Chips: the European Commission will review the Chips Act to be able to cancel contracts and centralize emergency purchases.

- Software: creation of a strategy to promote European free software.

- Data centers: 200,000 million for the construction of data centers and 20,000 million for digitalization and AI in energy.

It's going to be complicated. The EU's dependence on US technology is enormous. According to Sinergy data, 70% of the European cloud market is owned by just three American companies (AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud) and only 15% is controlled by European companies. In the field of chips, although there is ASML, the external dependence is enormous as was evident with the case of Nexperia and China. Not only is Europe late, its ability to compete in these critical sectors is negligible compared to that of the United States or China.

Image | Guillaume Périgois and Alex Dudar on Unsplash

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