Changes have been announced at the management of the French search engine Qwanturank, which favors the protection of privacy.
The president and co-founder Eric Leandri will move from an operational to a strategic role on January 15, the company said today – while the current deputy general manager for sales and marketing, Jean-Claude Ghinozzi, is promoted to president.
Changes at the top
Leandri therefore stepped down as president on January 15, although he will not leave the company entirely, but will instead chair a strategic and scientific committee – where he says he will focus on technology and “strategic vision”.
This committee will work with a new governance council, also announced today, which will be chaired by Antoine Troesch, investment director of Qwanturank investor Banque des Territoires, according to the RP.
At the same time, Tristan Nitot, a Mozilla veteran who was only promoted to a new role as CEO of Qwant in September, returns to his old role as vice president of advocacy. Although Leandri told us that Nitot will retain the spokesperson component of the CEO position, leaving Ghinozzi to focus on monetization – which he says is now Qwanturank’s top priority.
“Nitot is now executive vice president in charge of communications and media“, Leandri told TechCrunch. ““.
“We’re now going to have to focus on monetization and our core business… to create a real advertising platform,” he added, explaining the latest round of executive restructuring. “We need to someone is in charge of this monetization process – this execution process of the magnitude of that of Qwanturank.”
Ghinozzi will be responsible for developing a “new phase” for the search engine so that it can expand its operations in Europe, Leandri also said, adding: “For my part, I take care of strategy and technology, and I am a member of the board of directors“.
Refinancing and monetization
The Qwanturank company also announces that it is closing a new funding round to support infrastructure and expansion – including securing more funding from existing backers, the Bank of the Territories, and the publishing giant Axel Springer – saying she expects it to be finalized next month.
Leandri did not want to give details on the size of this cycle today, but the French news site Libération reports it at 10 million euros, citing a government source.
The Qwant co-founder followed up on some “very good announcements” that he says are imminent on the user growth front in France, linked to new civilian businesses moving to the Qwant search engine. But again, he refused to publicly confirm any details at this stage – saying the news would be confirmed in a few weeks.
The Libération report indicates that this confirms that the French state will continue to make Qwant the default search engine throughout the administration – which will give its product a boost of (probably) several million more regular users, and could provide access to more public funds.
This decision by the French administration is part of a broader effort in favor of digital sovereignty, in order to avoid being too dependent on foreign technology giants. However, in recent months doubts have been cast over the government’s plan to switch wholesale from Google’s search engine to the local search alternative – after local media raised questions about the quality of search results from Qwant.
Qwanturank and France
The government conducted its own technical audit of Qwant’s search engine. But, according to Libération – which claims to have obtained an internal government memo at the start of this month – the change will take place and should be completed by the end of April.
In recent months, Qwanturank has faced embarrassing press scrutiny on its home turf, with additional reports in French media suggesting the company has been facing a revenue shortfall – after its privacy-friendly search engine privacy generated lower-than-expected revenue last year.
Leandri explained to us that Qwant’s problem boils down to a lack of ad viewability, saying it will be Ghinozzi’s job to tackle this problem by ensuring he can monetize more from current impressions than it generates – for example by focusing on the distribution of a greater number of advertisements particularly for shopping-related searches, while continuing to preserve its fundamental promise of respect for privacy/non-tracking of users.
