[crocodiletears]

Hadn't heard of Qwant. Looks like they do their own indexing, which is good to see. Definitely an engine to keep an eye on.

Ecosia is just repackaged Bing, ostensibly with a second filter/ranking pass over Bing's results iirc. Is there much difference between the two from an end-user perspective, beyond the ecology gimmick?

[nunobrito]

Ecosia is a small Berlin startup. They are profitable and happy to just relay the results from other search engines.

Qwant is far bigger. Aims to be a complete replacement for Google in Europe with their own datasets. They have difficulties in funding and their survival is mostly depending on public funding and eventually being accepted as default choice for companies across Europe.

From that perspective, it makes a huge difference when more people become aware that independent options exist.