OpenWebSearch.eu

What OpenWebSearch.eu does

OpenWebSearch.eu is a European research consortium launched in September 2022 under the EU's Horizon Europe programme (Grant Agreement No 101070014), coordinating 14 research and computing centers across 7 European countries to develop an open web search infrastructure. Its core product is the Open Web Index (OWI), a publicly accessible web index prototype launched in May 2025 containing 9.14 billion crawled URLs across 185 languages from 28 million hosts, with a 35.09 TiB index size and a daily crawling rate of 1 TiB. The technical stack includes the OWLer web crawler (producing WARC archives), the MOSAIC search framework for vertical search engines, the OWILIX CLI tool for thematic data extraction, a five-site iRODS data federation across CERN, LRZ, DLR, IT4I, and CSC Finland, and a ScyllaDB URL frontier handling 94.7 million daily operations. The project also developed the Common Index File Format (CIFF), an open standard for exchanging inverted index data.

Name

OpenWebSearch.eu

Legal name

OpenWebSearch.eu (European Research Consortium)

Website

https://openwebsearch.eu

Company type

Private

Founded year

2022

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

OpenWebSearch.eu is a non-profit EU-funded research consortium of 14 European institutions that builds and maintains the Open Web Index, a publicly accessible open web-search infrastructure serving European researchers, public institutions, and vertical search application developers.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Open Web Search Infrastructure

NAICS

Web Search Portals, Libraries, Archives, and Other Information Services (5192), Computer Systems Design and Related Services (54151)

SIC

Services-Computer Integrated Systems Design (7373), Services-Computer Programming Services (7371)

akta.pro primary industry

Enterprise Search, Indexing & Content Discovery (HDAEAGAH)

akta.pro secondary industry

Data Engineering, Integration & ETL/ELT Services (BPAEAHAB)

Keywords

• Open web search infrastructure
• Web index platform
• Web crawling technology
• Open source search engine
• Digital sovereignty search

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Technology or R&D, Infrastructure, Personnel, Operations, Marketing or Sales

Revenue model

1. EU Research Funding: Funded by European Union's Horizon research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101070014. This is a non-commercial research project.
2. Open Web Index Data (Research License): Index shards available for download under a dedicated research license via openwebindex.eu dashboard. Data currently only available for research and development purposes.

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels4 records

Marketing channels9 records

Core offering

OpenWebSearch.eu develops and operates an open European web search infrastructure centered on the Open Web Index (OWI), a federated index of 9.14 billion URLs across 185 languages. The infrastructure includes the OWLer web crawler, Resilipipe preprocessing pipeline, MOSAIC search application framework, OWILIX CLI tool, and the Common Index File Format (CIFF) standard, distributed across a five-site iRODS federation spanning CERN, LRZ, DLR, IT4I, and CSC Finland. The project delivers index data and tools free of charge under a research license for research, innovation, and AI application development.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• Open Web Index (OWI): The core European open web index infrastructure developed by the project for free and unbiased internet search.
• OWSAI

Products and services

• Open Web Index (OWI) Europe's first publicly accessible open web index containing 9.14 billion URLs across 185 languages from 28 million hosts, with a 35.09 TiB index size. Provides free and unbiased internet search infrastructure for research, innovation, and AI application development under a dedicated research license via the openwebindex.eu dashboard.
• OWLer Crawler Open-source web crawling component for collecting web content and producing WARC archives. Handles large-scale crawling across the consortium's federated infrastructure and is used by downstream search applications.
• MOSAIC Search Framework Search application framework developed at CERN used for building vertical search engines and specialized applications, including the Nooon search engine for disability-related knowledge and other institutional search deployments.
• OWILIX CLI Tool Command-line interface for extracting thematic slices of the Open Web Index, enabling researchers and developers to work with specific subsets of web data locally.

Quantifiable outcome

• €4.5 billion projected net benefit over 10 years for European economy
• +2 more outcomes

Named customers5 records

Segments4 records

Ideal customer profiles4 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration4 records

AI capability8 records

Feature8 records

Partnerships

27 partnerships are on record, tiered minor and core.

• University of Oldenburg (NordLink)minorStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 June 2024Third-party project connecting HPC cluster (161 nodes, 20,000+ CPUs, 36 NVIDIA GPUs) to OWS infrastructure via HEAppE middleware.
• EXAION (EEI)minorStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 June 2024Third-party project providing GPU-accelerated bare-metal servers and virtual machines in French data centres for MASTODON crawler.
• Know Center Research GmbH (TILDE)minorStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2024Third-party project building health domain search system with bias checking, fairness-aware ranking, and visual exploration tools.
• University of Groningen (AKASE)minorStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2024Third-party project building argument-aware search engine and multi-agent deliberation platform (ArgsBase).
• DEXAI (VERITAS)minorStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2024Third-party project building Chrome browser extension for fact-checking powered by RAG via Open Web Index.
• E Foundation (OMMS)minorStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2024Third-party project enriching OpenStreetMap with POI data from Open Web Index for mobile maps application.
• University of Pisa and University of Glasgow (FUN)minorStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2024Third-party project developing neural crawling methods using AI language models to estimate semantic quality of web pages.
• Spinque (CIFFIL)minorStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2024Third-party project enabling Dutch municipalities to share search index data through Common Index File Format (CIFF).
• ZenLab (DTCommerce)minorStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2024Third-party project building open-source tools for small retailers to import product data and create AI-enhanced online shops.
• Mücke Roth & Company (MRC)minorStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 November 2023Third-party project conducting market potential assessment. Quantified €4.5 billion net benefit over 10 years and 4-year ROI for the Open Web Index.
• University of Oldenburg (LISA Project)minorStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 November 2023Third-party project developing legal framework for Open Web Index including EULA, governance structures, and compliance guidelines.
• University of Twente (LAW4OSAI)minorStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 November 2023Third-party project developing browser plugin and algorithm for detecting content licenses on websites during web crawling.
• Markov Solutions (Open Console)minorStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 November 2023Third-party project building infrastructure to share website information and improve knowledge quality through verified ownership.
• University of PassaucoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 September 2022Germany-based university leading technical development. Michael Granitzer serves as project coordinator. Hosts technical driver role in the initiative.
• Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ)coreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 September 2022Germany's top data centre providing stable infrastructure. Dieter Kranzlmüller chairs the Board of Directors. Serves as data controller for privacy matters.
• CERNcoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 September 2022European Organization for Nuclear Research contributes supercomputing infrastructure, develops search applications (MOSAIC, Nooon), and provides ethical/legal assessments. Key contributor to URL Frontier and iRODS federation.
• Radboud UniversitycoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 September 2022The Netherlands-based university contributing to Information Retrieval research. Djoerd Hiemstra leads the Federated Search research group and introduced the Open Web Index concept.
• German Aerospace Center (DLR)coreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 September 2022Contributes to infrastructure management and governance. Dr. Stefan Voigt serves as board member of Open Search Foundation and head of OpenSearch@DLR project.
• IT4I (IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center)coreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 September 2022Czech Republic's national supercomputing centre. Provides the Lexis Platform for high-bandwidth data downloads and hosts parts of OWSAI infrastructure.
• CSC – IT Center for SciencecoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 September 2022Finnish IT center for science contributing to federated data infrastructure and HPC resources.
• Open Search Foundation e.V.coreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 September 2022German NGO coordinating the initiative post-project. Led by Christine Plote (Chairwoman) and Dr. Stefan Voigt (Chairman). Promotes independent, free access to internet information.
• Graz University of TechnologycoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 September 2022Austrian university contributing to technical development. Alexander Nussbaumer from TU Graz interviewed about the initiative.
• Leipzig UniversitycoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 September 2022German university contributing to search research. Martin Potthast from Webis Group affiliated with Leipzig.
• A1 SlovenijacoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 September 2022Slovenian telecommunications company contributing to the consortium.
• nl Net FoundationcoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 September 2022Dutch foundation contributing to the open search ecosystem.
• Suma-evcoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 September 2022German organization with Wolfgang Sander-Beuermann contributing expertise on search transparency.
• Webis GroupcoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 September 2022Research group affiliated with Leipzig University conducting search quality research.

Scale indicators13 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Emerging players

• Qwant: French privacy-focused search engine that has explicitly aligned with European digital sovereignty goals and historically explored independent indexing (in partnership with Elasticsearch). A regional peer pursuing the same sovereignty narrative from the consumer-search side.
• Mojeek: Independent UK-based search engine that operates its own crawler and index — a smaller but directly comparable independent full-stack alternative to OWI as a sovereign web search engine.
• Ecosia: Berlin-based search engine with sustainability and privacy positioning, also serving European users concerned about Big Tech dependence. Comparable as a mission-driven European alternative search experience, though it relies on Bing index data.
• Brave Search: Operates its own web index (built partly from acquired Tailcat technology and supplemented by third-party sources) within the Brave browser ecosystem. A commercial-scale peer demonstrating the technical and economic feasibility of a non-Google independent index.

Others

• CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research): Core infrastructure partner contributing supercomputing resources, MOSAIC/Nooon search applications, and iRODS federation hosting. Comparable as a large European intergovernmental research organization that supplies scientific computing infrastructure to open web search efforts.
• Stichting NLnet: Dutch foundation funding open internet and open search infrastructure; partner in the OpenWebSearch.eu consortium. Comparable as an open-internet funding entity supporting independent search and privacy-enhancing technologies in Europe.

Broad incumbents

• Internet Archive: Non-profit digital library archiving web pages via the Wayback Machine. A much larger, longer-running open web archive with overlapping mission (preserving and providing open access to web content) but a heritage, library-focused model rather than active search infrastructure.
• DuckDuckGo: Privacy-focused search engine that primarily aggregates results from upstream providers (historically Bing) but has invested in its own crawler and index assets (DuckDuckBot). Relevant as a privacy-positioned competitor in the same narrative space.

Direct peers

• Common Crawl: Non-profit that produces and freely distributes massive open web crawl datasets (WARC files). The closest direct analogue to OpenWebSearch.eu in mission, data format, and open-license model, though Common Crawl operates globally without an EU sovereign framing.
• Open Search Foundation: German non-profit that hosts and now coordinates OpenWebSearch.eu post-grant. The closest institutional peer — shares leadership, governance, and mission around independent open search — and effectively the continuation vehicle for OWI.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/openwebsearch-eu

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles3 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

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M&A

Investments

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Frequently asked questions about OpenWebSearch.eu