We’re (a group of friends) building a search engine from scratch to compete with DuckDuckGo. It still needs a name and logo.

Here’s some pictures (results not cherrypicked): https://imgur.com/a/eVeQKWB

Unique traits:

  • Written in pure Rust backend, HTML and CSS only on frontend - no JavaScript, PHP, SQL, etc…
  • Has a custom database, schema, engine, indexer, parser, and spider
  • Extensively themeable with CSS - theme submissions welcome
  • Only two crates used - TOML and Rocket (plus Rust’s standard library)
  • Homegrown index - not based on Google, Bing, Yandex, Baidu, or anything else
  • Pages are statically generated - super fast load times
  • If an onion link is available, an “Onion” button appears to the left of the clearnet URL
  • Easy to audit - No: JavaScript, WASM, etc… requests can be audited with F12 network tab
  • Works over Tor with strictest settings (official Tor hidden service address at the bottom of this post)
  • Allows for modifiers: hacker -news +youtube removes all results containing hacker news and only includes results that contain the word “youtube”
  • Optional tracker removal from results - on by default h No censorship - results are what they are (exception: underage material)
  • No ads in results - if we do ever have ads, they’ll be purely text in the bottom right corner, away from results, no media
  • Everything runs in memory, no user queries saved.
  • Would make Richard Stallman smile :)

THIS IS A PRE-ALPHA PRODUCT, it will get much MUCH better over the coming months. The dataset in the temporary hidden service linked below does not do our algorithm justice, its there to prove our concept. Please don’t judge the technology until beta.

Onion URL (hosted on my laptop since so many people asked for the link): ht6wt7cs7nbzn53tpcnliig6zrqyfuimoght2pkuyafz5lognv4uvmqd.onion

  • Amerikan Pharaoh@lemmygrad.ml
    0·
    8 months ago

    I mean, a search engine is literally the last thing on the internet I’d pay a subscription for. In a world where literally everything else nickels-and-dimes us for subscription service, search engines, torrent trackers, game modders who paywall their mods, and other kitschy non-essentials are literally the first things to get shuffled off the monthly budget.

    If we weren’t in such a deep recession that I pay as much a week for my gas as I do my groceries, with rent and ACTUAL bills eating the majority of what’s left, I’d feel a bit differently; but if wishes were horses, we’d all ride. I literally had to start growing my own green rather than buying it, the economy’s so shit.