Why French Search Engine Qwant Thinks It Can Beat Google

If Google is Goliath then Qwant sees itself as David.

The French search engine, recently integrated into a custom edition of Mozilla Firefox, protects the anonymity of 21 million people across 30 countries who use the search engine monthly, which is70 percent higher than where the company was a year ago. This month, they’re also launching a mobile app , which will allow people to use a mobile search engine that does not track them and embeds a secure web browser.

The search engine was co-founded in 2013 by Eric Leandri, a tech entrepreneur who has a background in network security, and Jean Manuel Rozan, an investor who is a former bank trader. Today, the two co-founders have a team of over 50 in their offices in Paris, Nice and Rouen and are growing to introduce this privacy-protected search engine as an alternative to Google.

“We didn’t want to offer just another search engine,” said Leandri. “We had values to stand for; respecting our users’ privacy by forbidding ourselves to track what they do or search online. It has been a constraint put on our engineering and marketing teams from day one, and they embrace it because it is both challenging and rewarding.”

Qwant searching the web. Image: Qwant

You could compare Qwant to DuckDuckGo, the search engine which avoids personalized search results, or the Dutch search engine ixquick, which also allows private browsing (but still brings up half a page of Google ads). Qwant doesn’t use cookies to follow users, and neither does it collect personal browsing data or do any data profiling. Two people searching for “trip to Mexico” in Paris and in California will get the exact same result on Qwant.com.

Qwant further distinguishes itself with its search categories, which go beyond the typical news, images and video tabs to include a social media category (that collects results from Twitter only) and a music tab that sources albums and songs from iTunes. Qwant also has an artist page for each major pop star, including recent news on them and social media-related postings that relate to your search (search “green trees” on Qwant and it brings up Al Green’s latest album). It recently introduced a section called “Notebooks,” which creates profiles for users and offers a page of multimedia message boards where users can upload their own photos, videos and texts to comment and discuss. There are 31 different categories like jobs, cars, gastronomy, health and hobbies. A search engine for children called Qwant Junior is also up and running.

Qwant searching for a very good band. Image: Nicholas Deleon/Motherboard

In August, Qwant was added to the German, French and British versions of Firefox for desktop, as well as Firefox for Android and for iOS. The company's add-on extension with Firefox has roughly 5,000 weekly downloads, over 140,000 downloads in the past three months.

Qwant is also synonymous with the European distrust of Google’s domination of the internet, specifically how users are tracked for ads.

“We are at a turning point where we as citizens, internet users and consumers have to choose to which extent we have a right to privacy, and to which extent we feel free to exercise it,” Leandri said. “You have to think of the internet not only as a means of communication, but more and more as a surrogate brain; things that would have been kept within the impenetrable boundaries of your own mind, or in the sanctuary of your own home, are now sent on servers for the world or a few companies to see. Everything we do is increasingly stored and can be retrieved on demand.”

Even where there are privacy options, Leandri warns of “false choices.” For example, some companies might offer user privacy and tailored services but in the fine print, your data is still collected for the future. “They pretend that you can’t have artificial intelligence without giving up control over your data, but for the most part that is a lie,” said Leandri. “It certainly is faster and easier to exploit people’s privacy to educate AIs, but we believe there are and will be alternative solutions.”

Searching for news on President-elect Trump on Qwant. Image: Nicholas Deleon/Motherboard

Leandri worries most about the growing dependence on AI, or the “digital assistants” that anticipate our needs. “The more you get used to it, the less you will wonder how and why an AI recommends a certain path instead of another, which story to read, what products to buy,” he said. “Any company with such power may be tempted to abuse it, but even with the best intentions, the effects that such tailoring algorithms can have are hard to predict.”

However, they make their profits through pay-per-click websites, having agreements with a Berlin-based affiliate internet marketing firm called Zanox, which connects users with commercial websites (Qwant earns between44 to 88 cents per click), they also have planned partnerships with TripAdvisor (details are yet to be announced) and eBay. Qwant profited by selling20 percent of its shares to Axel Springer,a right-leaning German publishing house for $6 million in 2014 (the publishing house’s chief executive Mathias Döpfner has been publicly critical about Google’s power).

Qwant tries to keep its integrity despite making a profit.

“We won’t try and lead you to a specific service instead of a better one because we would have business interests in doing so, or filter out results based on some political or commercial agenda,” said Leandri. “Our promise to the users and to the whole web community is that we are fair with everyone.”

We are at a turning point where we as citizens, internet users and consumers have to choose to which extent we have a right to privacy, and to which extent we feel free to exercise it.

To be transparent, Qwant has released its source code so third-parties, like the French National Data Protection Body (CNIL), can certify its non-tracking policies and see it’s not collecting data it’s also shared their code with white-hat hackers for security reviews. This year, the company hope to open source its algorithms to ensure anyone can verify its privacy practices.

It is still up against Google, however. Qwant has 12 percent of its users using the search engine with smartphones. Mobile search traffic is dominated by Google who has 95 percent of the US smartphone market share. It doesn’t help either that Quant isn’t listed as a default search engine on Safari and Chrome browsers. But it’s working on broadening the horizon for web users. “Whereas you only have a couple of search engines deciding what should be provided to billions of people, it is not so much a problem of neutrality,” said Leandri, “it is a problem of democracy.”

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Why Hearables Could Be the Next Big Thing in Wearable Devices

Wearables are more than just stuck to your wrist. They’re innovative pieces of technology which help their wearers stay fit, track health issues, or protect themselves from danger. And they’ve taken the tech industry by storm. Last year, smartwatches reached $9 billion in sales, proving they’re ripe stomping ground for consumer electronics. But now, a new crop of “hearables,” or ear-based wearables that use hearing aid-like wireless technology that fits a microcomputer in your ear canal, is expected to be worth $25 billion by 2019, saturating the fastest growing market in wearables.

“The ear is the new wrist,” writes wireless technology expert Nick Hunn. “Earbuds may be simple tech today, but they can stream an endless supply of new music. As they don’t rely on a sensor, but are just a carrier of content, the content they supply can remain eternally fresh and compelling—they don’t need constantly new and novel applications to keep us hooked.”

Hearables are finally gaining steam as the next big thing, as brands like Samsung jumped on board with their cord-free fitness earbuds the IconX, and Apple’s wireless headphones, AirPods, which went on sale in December after a two-month delay.

With the iPhone 7 getting rid of the headphone jack, some are eager to point out that wireless Bluetooth headphones are the way of the future. Consequently, there are different types of hearables entering the market, from the hearing aid companies that are syncing their earpieces with wireless devices to the consumer electronics companies that are making wireless earbuds that measure biometrics (measure heart rate, blood pressure or pulse) and speakers that are better than your average Sony headphones.

While big companies like Apple and Samsung are getting into the game, competition is coming from independent, crowdfunded hearables that are quickly filling the market.

Claiming to be “the world's first hearable,” Bragi’s Dash earbuds are personalized to fit each person’s ears, but the general movements are nod to accept a phone call, shake your head to decline. It also has an activity tracker for people running a 5K marathon, for example, and to listen to music with 4GB of storage so you don’t have to bring your phone with you everywhere (as the Bluetooth connection can drop out).

Another new hearable is VI, which raised $1.7 million on Kickstarter and calls itself “the first AI personal trainer.” The biosensor earbuds, with speech recognition and an app for iOS and Android, puts a pre-recorded fitness coach in your ear which pushes you during workouts to meet your weight loss goals and reviews your progress. It aims to overcome “workout dropout,” or laziness, by creating a personal relationship with the user’s personalized fitness plans by syncing up with your habits, physiology and exercise data you have stored on your Apple HealthKit, Google Fit, Fitbit or Strava, or any other device you use. Combined with measuring your heart rate, the temperature, motion and the environment with aerospace-grade biosensors, it works to push you beyond your daily routine. Expect to hear motivation from a human voice (rather than a robotic one), which says things like “Let’s get to know each other so I can calibrate myself,” which is the introduction for the first few training sessions, and “You ran longer than yesterday, way to go!”

But just as all wearables are not just for fitness, neither are all hearables. Some that have yet to be released include the Pilot, a translation app and hearable by New York’s Waverly Labs which raised $3.5 million on Indiegogo from over 15,000 backers. This smart earpiece translates languages with voice recognition in real time for the wearer. The translation app is available now for Android while the earbuds are expected by the summer.

And the Earin could be the go-to for music fans, as the high fidelity audio buds from Sweden bring speakers to wireless audio with “memory foam buds” that basically mold to the shape of your ears, so they don’t fall out while you’re jogging. Meanwhile, the HereOne is a wireless listening system that connects earbuds to an app that allows the regulars, like taking phone calls and noise-cancelling.

The wireless analyst Hunn says one of the biggest challenges is that hearables will need to keep up with an ever-changing market. “Wearables currently ask a lot of the wearer—that they pay good money for it, that they need to charge it, that they need to spend time looking at the data that issues from it, et cetera,” he said. “Few have a strong enough compelling experience to hook the customer for more than a few months.”

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This One Ton Robot Was Created to Ease Your Fears of a Robot Takeover

On November 24, the London Design Museum reopens to the public inside of a newly renovated, $102 million building on Kensington High Street in London after being based in the nearby district of Shad Thames since 1989.

The new museum, designed by British architect John Pawson, is set in the former Commonwealth Institute, which first opened in 1962. The museum’s move was needed, according to the museum’s director Deyan Sudjic. It outgrew its old space, which didn’t have an auditorium, and there was too little space for an education program.

Mimus! Image: Madeline Gannon/Autodesk

As part of the grand reopening, its forthcoming exhibition Fear and Love opening November 24 features the latest crop of 3D-printed masks, wearables, and robots, like the Mimus, a 1,200 kilogram (2,645 pounds) industrial robot which has been programmed to respond to the human presence. It is created by Pittsburgh designer Madeline Gannon, who wants to disarm our fears around robots and for us see them as empathetic companions.

The initial idea for Mimus came from the head curator of the Design Museum, Justin McGuirk (The Guardian’s former design critic), who contacted Gannon after seeing a video of her work online. He then asked her to create a new robot that addresses the fears and anxieties we have around robots. The new commission was created in partnership with Autodesk, a software company used by architects and engineers, and Gannon developed the software and hardware over the past three months at the Autodesk BUILD Space, an innovation studio in Boston.

The towering robot was given the name Mimus as a play on words, but also helps situate the robot as an extension of the bird family. “Since our robot follows you around, we went with the name Mimus, from the Latin root word of ‘mimick,’” she said. “Mimus is also the genus of the mockingbird family, which we hope will help people see the robot as a creature, and not a thing.”

Gannon and Mimus. Image: Madeline Gannon/Autodesk

Mimus follows the movements of a nearby human being, whether they are walking around or moving their limbs. It turns the robot into a sort of pet which you would have at home, as it senses the people in its immediate environment and follows their movements. The premise is to see robots as fluid creatures, rather than just machines made of wires and steel. As the technical lead of the project Kevyn McPhail explains, “Our goal is to help transform the fearful relationship between humans and machines into an empathetic one.”

The robot will stand still in the exhibition until met with gallery goers. “Mimus is able to sense and respond to the presence of people as they are near her enclosure,” said Gannon. “We designed the interaction around the robot to mimic the experience of going to the zoo to see exotic and wondrous creatures.”

Gannon hopes that the behavior of Mimus will strike a chord in terms of creating an emotional response. “Empathy is important for every designed interaction, not just robotics,” she said. “Empathetic interfaces, ways of creating a shared understanding between people and technology, are very much an oversight in the software and machines we encounter on daily basis. I’m excited that is starting to change as more people are beginning to incorporate principles of ‘Human-Centered Design’ into technology.”

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