
Chairholder for Data Science
University of Passau
“OpenWebSearch.eu: Piloting an Open Infrastructure for Open Web Search and AI”
Web search has become an essential technology forming the backbone of our digital economy. A rather small number of gatekeepers dominate Web search, which creates a biased, one-sided information access centred around economic success. This one-sided ecosystem puts pressure on small contributors requiring them to optimize their content towards these gatekeeper a vicious cycle resulting in locked-in effects and a closed search engine ecosystem. In this talk, I will present the recently started OpenWebSearch.eu initiative, which aims on developing an Open Web Index (OWI) to promote an open search engine ecosystem and to provide true choice for users. I will discuss the principal of an Open Web Index, the technical challenges for developing it and how the research community could benefit from an open web search ecosystems that enables to conduct experiments at scale.
Biography
Prof. Dr. Michael Granitzer holds the Chair of Data Science at University of Passau since 2017 and was full professor for Media Computer Science at the University of Passau since 2012. His research interest is on applied machine learning, web information retrieval and natural language processing. His research interest is on applied machine learning, web information retrieval and natural language processing. He published over 250 mostly peer-reviewed publications including journal publications, book chapters and books in the above-mentioned fields. Previously, he was Scientific Director of the applied research centern “Know-Center” in Graz and assistant professor at the Knowledge Technology Institute of Graz University of Technology. He managed several nationally funded and European research projects on topics like federated search and recommender systems, linked open data, and information retrieval. Besides his research, he actively support young innovators and startups in startup programs at the University of Passau. Currently, he is the coordinator of the Horizon Europe project “OpenWebSearch.eu”.
For more details see http://mgrani.github.io/.