Business: Do not say “the French Google.” Qwant back in a final version, but seeks to stand out a bit more than the reference. With a tool rather successful.
Evening atypical Qwant launch this Thursday evening. The search engine “made in France”, as repeatedly emphasized its two founders, seems to hesitate between the display of the American ambitions of conquest and justification of his personality after a beta phase for the less turbulent.
slogan hammered by Jean-Manuel Rozan, President Qwant: “The company is French, the engineers are French, the French capital is.” Way to hang in the car made in France? This is a good war, and “search engine 360″ has other points to make.
French Capital … and American 
economic patriotism is tasteful, and it’s not the Americans who will challenge it. Between Motorola Moto X plays full map ‘God bless America’ and that Apple relocated the production of some of its machines on the floor of the United States, it feels right to let the neck when pushing the cock French comes innovate in the field of Google and company.
However, if the patent Frenchness would not be denied Qwant some contradictions can be identified. This should include the words “capital is overwhelmingly French.” Because when Qwant announced its first round and the preparation of the second, in March, there was talk of more U.S. investors.
Robert Pittman, including former CEO of AOL, owner of MTV and Pilot Group investment fund, put the balls in their personal capacity in the search engine tricolor. “He has personally invested 150,000 euros,” says Jean-Manuel Rozan, detailing the rest of the participants in two rounds:
- three non-French investors hold 2.5 to 3% of the capital
- four founders to hold 85%.
all for two fundraisers totaling 2.8 million euros. The figure is surprising in itself, as Jean-Manuel Rozan had reported to Clubic Pro in February, a little less than 10 million euros raised, then one round took place. The founder said today that “talked about several million euros”, but obviously did not want to dwell on the subject.
Understandably, since Qwant is “in the midst of a fundraising”, which should lead to the next school year. If it succeeds, the engine should be enough to hold between November 2013 and May 2014, when he hopes to have validated its “proof of concept” and pick institutional capital.
Qwant he found his personality 
founders had taken ill at the time, and continue to justify buying side performance including Microsoft. Some features, such as searching for pictures, too expensive to develop for now. “We are continuing and will continue to buy certain things,” insists Eric Léandri, CEO Qwant.
stand, so the engine plays other features. Display on a single page of results from web pages, social networks, photos and video, news, or shopping. The presence of “hot trends” in footnotes, identified by colors according to their origin and design reworked to include images.
display mode “Mosaic” results also remains Qwant and now offers a “notebook” which allows to pinpoint search results with one click if they have an account and be there connected. Many tools that will help, hope the engine to win the label “360 engine” he claims. A new logo can also express this desire for differentiation. Exit the five colors reminiscent of Google.
For the rest, especially Qwant responds to criticism: the crawling and indexing are active, say the founders, and have already contributed to the answers already and already 1 million queries per day, a total of 225 million requests since launch.
engine includes 3.5 million visits each month, with some interesting statistics that seem at first to validate the cluster and discovery: 70% of visitors who return after the first visit, 5.7% of bounce rate and 6 minutes 13 spent by each visitor on average on the site. With, to support all this, a data center – “in France.” – Fully equipped with SSD and based primarily on Hadoop and MongoDB
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII’m freeeeee
But one of the main arguments of the new search engine is its Freedom Qookie. Funny name, as the cookie is not usually synonymous with freedom on the Internet. Still, it is useful to “provide a better user experience,” axis of conventional communication services online Qwant ensures that his will not permit tracking of the user.
That could pose some problems for the advertising engine … Because at a time when Facebook has integrated an option retargeting advertising directly into their news feed, where retargeting is praised by all small marketing world for its ability to raise the number of clicks at the same time reduces acquisition costs, Qwant ensures that there “many other ways to earn money to spy on users.”
economic model Qwant is nonetheless based on advertising and affiliate. Few details were given by the two co-founders, if not the ability to highlight links in Shopping custom leading partners to e-tailers ads. The ba-B.A affiliation, in fact.
“It does not follow the user, we do not track, we do not seek to know his identity … The Freedom Qookie is just there to improve the search experience,” Rozan and Léandri ensure that n do not hesitate to drop some heavy qualifiers meaning in the world of software: “open”, “free”, “fun”, “open to all”
.
“free” does not mean that developers will be able to dig into the code of the cookie as they wish to ensure that actions are consistent with statements of principle. “There are so many services that are based on open solutions for their site close to the end … We prefer to talk about open data. Can not open our code, but it will provide API,” they promise.
The guarantees compliance statements on personal data Qwant refers to three legitimate steps:
- the lead and the presence of data in Europe, which was forced to be “CNIL-approved” in France and to other authorities for the protection of personal data where it operates,
- Qookie Freedom
- presence among the partners of the law firm Caprioli, specialist ICT law.
Finally, the approach Qwant seems to mark a turning point vis-à-vis the conquering communication that accompanied the launch of the first version in February – and why the founders recognize the hint of possible errors .
more modest in its ambitions display, the French search engine does not lack. A web app suitable for smartphones was launched in conjunction with the new website and promises Qwant applications for major mobile operating systems, although no date has been specified.
Similarly, various services are provided, some of which inevitably remind the reader something:
- Qwant Music is in the pipeline, which should offer “with a paid model”, “many things”, including streaming. We do not know more.
- QMail should also happen someday, though again, we have very little information. But one can imagine, given the webmail which he thought, and directions taken by Qwant vis-à-vis Google’s search engine, the French service could offer some interesting innovations.
- integration with Firefox. Linked to Social API? “We want to go further than the Social API with Firefox. Far,” promises Eric Léandri.
promises should give a bit of work to 25 employees and 25 employees Qwant Pertimm the company Eric Léandri which provides a number of technologies at the heart of search engine. Moreover Qwant announces that it is in the process of recruitment.
French search engine ensures that it will provide an update in September to communicate the progress of its projects. In the meantime, he tries to launch a full-service, including crawling and indexing, the United States, the United Kingdom, Alllemagne, Italy, Spain and Brazil.
He hopes to “gain credibility, notoriety and hearing.” Increasing credibility, if one believes the partnerships announced. Besides Caprioli and Pertimm firm partners include eBay, TripAdvisor, CNRS, ENSEA (School of Electronic Engineers), and the Institute for Research and Coordination Acoustic / Music Centre Pompidou (IRCAM).
remains the question of the reaction of the competition, if the stone had Qwant to be too annoying in the shoe of Google, for example. Jean-Manuel Rozan, connoisseur of market quality professional investor risk scans quickly.
“Suppose that in three years, we are the French startup experiencing the greatest success story. How vaudrons us say a number.” We think Neolane, recently acquired by Adobe, and the figure of 600 million
we advance. “Well, let’s say three years, we Valions $ 600 million. At the same time, one can imagine that Google has grown its market capitalization by 5% per year. They are now at 290 billion. So in three years, we will add $ 600 million, and they will win at lest about 50 billion dollars. They have nothing to do with us, we do not scare them. ” I said it.
No comments:
Post a Comment