Bitdefender search engine

Ok, some of you may bat an eye reading this, but there is renewed interest in a European based search solution. Qwant and Ecosia have started to build a web search index.

https://staan.ai/

https://www.eu-searchperspective.com/

https://blog.ecosia.org/launching-our-european-search-index/

Should Bitdefender enter this market? What's your opinion?

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Comments

Gjoksi

Voted +1.

@camarie @dvsls @Alexandru_BD

Any thoughts on this idea? Thanks.

Nunzio77

+1 for this idea

Alexandru_BD

Hello,

First of all, thank you for sharing your thoughts here.

Now, the way I see this (and this is just my personal opinion), these web search solutions are not inherently related to cybersecurity, so this would be the first observation to consider. Correct me if I'm wrong, but at first they don't seem to have anything to do with it. But they do hint at intriguing possibilities for enhancing online browsing safety, if we try to find links between what these tools actually do and the context of online browsing safety. Because that's really the end goal, isn't it? And there can be an opportunity to explore how to best verify the trustworthiness of retrieved content and avoid toxic or malicious data input. Hypothetically speaking, the way I think something like this could work is by building some safe search filters, and maybe some kind of source reputation scoring, or content validation layers which could help safeguard both users and AI models from misleading or harmful info.. And since we are discussing an AI-related topic, I think there's a growing concern that LLMs are starting to contaminate the data ecosystem, and I think this concern is valid. The below research dives deeper into this phenomenon called "model collapse", whereby AI trained on synthetic content produces increasingly useless or undesirable output:

https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/digest/model-collapse-and-the-right-to-uncontaminated-human-generated-data

But back to the initial topic. I think it's clear that the focus of these tools you mentioned is on digital autonomy or sovereignty, privacy, and let's call it search independence, if you will. So, a transparent search infrastructure that can reduce reliance on big tech, mitigating risks of unwarranted access, surveillance, or geopolitical dependency. Which is an interesting proposal, maybe an actual opportunity to interweave 'secure-by-design' principles.
However, if you ask me, I think it's a long shot to develop something in this area, as the cybersecurity vendor mostly focuses on anti-malware, anti-phishing technology and protection, so when it comes to browsing safety, they develop, maintain and innovate on defense mechanisms that ensure users don’t get served harmful web pages.

Petersl

+1 from me.