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A24 TECHNOLOGY
Friday 23 November 2018

European privacy search engines aim to challenge Google

By KELVIN CHAN has never felt their services
AP Business Writer were inferior to Google's.
LONDON (AP) — In the "I don't think people would
battle for online privacy, go back if they started us-
Google is a U.S. Goliath ing these sites," Walshe said.
facing a handful of Euro- They're "allowing you to
pean Davids. have greater choice and
The backlash over Big control and should hope-
Tech's collection of per- fully minimize the tracking,"
sonal data offers new hope which means you'll no lon-
to a number of little-known ger see, for example, the
search engines that prom- same ad for a pair of shoes
ise to protect user privacy. following you around on-
Sites like Britain's Mojeek , line, he said.
France's Qwant , Unbubble Walshe likes Startpage's
in Germany and Swisscows new "anonymous view" fea-
don't track user data, filter ture, which goes a step fur-
results or show "behavioral" ther by letting users browse
ads. a copy of a website from its
These sites are growing search results, not the ac-
amid the rollout of new Eu- tual site.
ropean privacy regulations Germany's Unbubble is a
and numerous corporate "meta-search" site, send-
data scandals, which have In this Tuesday, Nov, 13, 2018 photo, Andreas Wiebe, founder of Swiss privacy-focused search ing encrypted queries to
raised public awareness engine Swisscows, is photographed in London. more than 30 other search
about the mountains of Associated Press engines. It promises neutral
personal information com- tic, where internet users are efforts to reclaim European Android operating system. search results rather than
panies stealthily gather seen as consumers whose "digital sovereignty." Mojeek, based in Brighton, ones filtered by an algo-
and sell to advertisers. rights are dictated by the The site doesn't use track- England, operates on simi- rithm catering to personal
Widespread suspicion in Eu- terms of their agreements ing cookies or profile users, lar principles and has so far biases.
rope about Google's stran- with tech companies. allowing it to give two dif- cataloged 2 billion web- Outside Europe, there's also
glehold on internet search- Traffic numbers show inter- ferent users the exact same pages. The company says it U.S. site DuckDuckGo.
es has also helped make est is rising. Qwant's que- result. It has built its own in- gets 200,000 unique visitors Some privacy search oper-
the continent a spawning ries tripled to 10 billion in dex of 20 billion pages cov- a month and search que- ators say it's equally impor-
ground for secure search- 2017. On a monthly basis, ering French, German and ries have quintupled over tant to help users avoid "fil-
ing. Europe is particularly it's getting 80 million visits Italian and plans to expand the past year. ter bubbles," in which con-
sensitive to privacy issues while requests are growing it to about two dozen other Another British startup, Os- tent is pre-selected by the
because spying by the 20 percent. Leandri says languages, for which results cobo, does anonymous likes of Google and Face-
Nazi-era Gestapo and the the site now accounts for currently come from Micro- searches for U.K. users with book based on previous
secret services in the So- 6 percent of search engine soft's Bing. results licensed from Ya- searches and other data.
viet Union is still within living market share in France, its To be sure, Google's in no hoo/Bing. Netherlands- "The main idea is to provide
memory. biggest market. danger of toppling. The based Startpage anony- neutral information and
"For us, it's all about citi- Qwant is even getting of- company based in Moun- mizes Google search re- allow people to depend
zens and citizens have the ficial support. Last month tain View, California, ac- sults, stripping out ads and less on machine learning-
right to privacy," said Eric the French army and par- counts for three-quarters tracking. based filters," said Unbub-
Leandri, chairman of Paris- liament both said they or more of global mar- Pat Walshe, a U.K.-based ble founder Tobias Sasse.
based Qwant. He said that would drop Google and ket share, depending on privacy consultant, has ago, said founder Andreas
view contrasts with the use Qwant as their default whom you ask, and rules been using Startpage and Wiebe, who also runs soft-
mindset across the Atlan- search engine, as part of the mobile market with its Qwant for years and says ware company Hulbee.q

Unconventional Dating App, HUD, Reverts to Traditional Advertising with a Twist

Associated Press nipple or a dating app companies to get a foot in running an advertising pressures of ‘finding the
AUCKLAND, New Zealand- that’s destigmatising the the door. campaign of 100 daring one’. In a market where
In a market that is satu- hook up culture, both are However, market leaders billboards over the entirety dating apps often misled
rated with blasé content, banned from major social such as Tinder and Bumble, of LA. users into thinking they
it takes a bold move to networks. Three quarters through their opaque dis- Edward Chen, Founder could find their future wife
stand out from the crowd. of Instagram’s users are cussion about the nature & CEO of C & Z Tech, the or husband, HUD offers a
HUD, a female-first hook- under 34 and so are half of sexual relations, which company that developed safe and mutual consent
up app, was forced to step of Facebook users. How- inevitably takes place on HUD, discusses why dating platform for people to ex-
outside the lines of con- ever, their policies around the apps, are permitted to apps need to be honest plore casual dating and
ventional advertising when advertising and explicit advertise through these so- about what their users are hook-ups.” said Chen.
they were denied the right content do not reflect their cial media channels. often on the apps for. The swipe-free, commit-
to advertise on prominent changing, more progres- Since HUD app refuses to “As stated in the name, ment-free nature of the
social media channels. sive audience. compromise their hon- Hook Up Dating, HUD is dating app has made HUD
Unbelievably, as we near With Facebook launching est and upfront accep- 100% transparent about one of the fastest growing
the end of 2018, the cor- their own dating service, tance about the realities what the app offers. This dating apps in the App
porate giants of social me- the tech giant is making of online dating, they have has created a community Store, growing by around
dia are still so conservative. it increasingly harder for been forced to revert to of 4 million like-minded us- four thousand people per
Whether that be a female smaller, start-up dating traditional media and are ers, that are free from the day.q