The German group Axel Springer, which already owns Aufeminin.com and SeLoger.com in France, has announced its acquisition of a stake worth nearly 10 million euros, the equivalent of 20%, in the start-up Qwant, the French search engine and a company symbolic of the Côte d’Azur’s application for the French Tech label.
The start-up, created three years ago with offices in Nice and Paris, presents itself as the “anti-Google”. Qwant claims to respect privacy and presents its search results differently in order to differentiate itself from Google. Last year, 507 million searches were handled by Qwant, while American giant Google received in excess of 2,000 billion. Qwant’s is set to exceed one billion searches in 2014.
It was following the launch of the search engine in Germany that the Springer group contacted the founders. Negotiations have resulted in this investment which should enable the company to improve its product and launch it in other countries.
For more information: qwant.com and axelspringer.de/en
