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Federated Search Engine? (self.foss)

submitted 1 year ago by ConsciousCode to c/foss

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Considering the potential of the fediverse, is there any version of that for search engines? Something to break up a major point of internet centralization, fragility, and inertia to change (eg Google will never, ever, offer IPFS searches). Not only would decentralization be inherently beneficial, it would mean we're no longer compelled to hand over private information to centralized unvetted corporations like Google, Microsoft, and DuckDuckGo.

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[–] lengsel@latte.isnot.coffee 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Are you asking for something like Searx?

[–] RandomLegend@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But Searx isn't federated in any way is it?

i think it would be a huge undertaking to actually federate a search engine. What gain would you get from federating?

[–] lengsel@latte.isnot.coffee 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You can setup your own instance of hosting a Searx search engine once yo have a domain.

https://searx.github.io/searx/

[–] RandomLegend@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

yeah i know that. But that wasn't my question. It's about the "Federation" Part.

My SearX instance wouldn't be connected to anyone else's SearX instance and wouldn't get any benefit / information from other instances.

[–] hellfire103@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 year ago

Maybe YaCy is what you're thinking of? It would need some extra work on the backend for federation, but since YaCy builds its own search index, this would be a good idea.

[–] lengsel@latte.isnot.coffee 1 points 1 year ago

Correct, it would be you running your own anonymous search engine for anyone to use instead of Google, nothing more. It does search anything on other people's SearX servers.