Qwant + Fyde = staying true to open source and privacy

Have you ever felt concerned about all the data you generate as a user of digital services?

Same here and that's why we started FydeOS in the first place - to make your computing experience fast, secure and reliable, regardless of how old or powerful your hardware is. Nothing in our mission statement includes tracking your location or perusing your data for targeted ads.

And that is why we decided to dedicate this month's blogpost to our newest and very special partner - Qwant. They are a French search engine that collects none of your data and doesn't serve you targeted ads or sell you ads to advertisers. If less is more, none is certainly best in this case

To reiterate:

1. No, your search history and data will not be collected
2. Yes, you will be served untargeted ads when searching
3. No, the ads will not be targeted (see point 1)

What we aim to achieve here is to offer a bundle of products that cater to the needs of an audience at the cross-section of sustainability and privacy. Let's be honest, until recently we all loved the Internet and all it brought us. At some point though the nascent internet companies decided to monetize our time and attention through intrusive advertising and many of us find it disagreeable. However, this push for more local, privacy-focused solutions categorically does not stem from an anti-US sentiment. As Qwant's CEO, Olivier Abecassis, deftly put it in a previous interview:

“It is nothing against the U.S. or U.S. companies. It is all about the sovereignty of our business and companies.” [1]

What endears us to Qwant even more is that your privacy is not just a statement, but a way of life, enveloped in engineering decisions. Their deliberate lack of tracking and storing your data is so fundamental, that even if they wanted to do all those nefarious things, they simply couldn't - no cookies are used to profile you. Although we're based in London and the United Kingdom is no longer officially part of the EU, Fyde and Qwant both share a pride in our European heritage. We firmly believe this shared approach of embedding our values through engineering will be the basis of a great and lasting partnership.

Another similarity between our companies is that a lot of the good we do comes as a side effect of our business activities. In our case, providing a light-weight OS resulted in extending the life of existing computers, thus making computing more sustainable. With Qwant none of your data is collected. Even their most recent search features such as Flash Answers or the AI Chat, are fully-privacy friendly. You don't get a tailored search result - you see an honest representation of the world, devoid of an advertiser's slant. And that view is shared by all users. That way we don't have to force our values upon you. We can just create a great service for you to enjoy and we don't have to shout about it, brag about it (well, a little blogging won't hurt), etc. Profitez-en bien!

References