Yaci - A decentralized search engine based on P2P

[dredger]

Hi all,

Just read an interresting article which describe a new search engine (visibly from germany) which could lead to a real google competitor.
This topic may mainly interrest IT guys, but this would concern anyone.

First, here's the french article which describes it :

Yacy – Le moteur de recherche sans censure

On l’a encore vu récemment, Google n’est pas vraiment neutre et pratique la censure. Il en va de même pour tous les moteurs de recherche qui fonctionnent de manière centralisée. Alors b…

korben.info

and here's the automatic google translate link to english

So, it's not search engine page as we know, but an application you install so you host your own search engine, and this application communicates with any other owner of this application to share a decentralized database !
The idea is pretty good and i can't help to think about STO and STS here. Google and any company which is owned by one are a few people is a representation of the STS hierarchy, pyramidal, with a keyword which is "ownership", when for STO, it's all at the same level, and the keyword (or one of the) is share, or sharing, or networking too. And here this is the first time i hear about a search engine which is clearly STO-oriented, if i could say.

Here's the YaCy website :

Home - YaCy

YaCy P2P - Decentralized Search Engine

yacy.de

Maybe interresting to test, to start to install on our computers, the more people will use it, the stronger and more accurate the global search engine (which is finally the sum of all people using it, trully and STO concept) will become. This may even be a good idea to promote this to any SOTT/forum member, and dedicate a thread for people having issue to install/run/use it. This may interrest @Scottie who seems to like also IT on top of electronics.

That's all for today :)

 

[Vajra2]

That sounds promising D - we very badly need a less commercialised search capability on the web.
The big question is perhaps how reliable and user friendly YaCy might be at this point.
Does anybody have any experience?.

What is clear is that we have a huge problem with the currently available (Google monopoly based?) search engines. Even supposedly independent examples as the years have gone by bring up an ever shorter list of vaguely related but highest paying results with little regard for the information actually sought in a search.
Output is by now down to about a page before it starts to repeat.
It's next to impossible to access the sort of technical and special interest content that searches were routinely bringing up by the 1990s. What little there is is typically (overtly or covertly) infommercial in form and requires membership and/or a payment/and/or being subjected to unwanted advertising to access.
It seems likely that the many that back in those years worked to develop and publish informative content have more or less given up too - presumably because short of having the website address in advance their content can't be found.
It's ultimately as you suggest yet another example of how value free narrow thinking focused solely on maximisation of short term profit is entropic in nature - of how it destroys what it touches.
What was a fabulous tool by which to share information has been reduced to minimal usefulness.
Hollywood and the cinema industry have done much the same - they ate their seed corn by focusing on the sale of over priced tickets and 'refreshments', the building of high overhead and grandiose cinemas and by refusing to invest in films that they didn't regard as a safe bet - endless repeats of franchises, simplistic B movie quality stuff etc.
On a much larger scale the tying of our capital up in non-value adding financial market speculations instead of wealth generating investments by the financial 'industry' has had similar effects on whole economies.
It's the story of our collapsing Western cultures really - we badly need to start seeing people with higher values and more holistic views finding their way into positions of influence and authority.
That's not going to happen however until we move away from the hyper authoritarian and hierarchical forms of business organisation that have become the norm (call centres and corporates are especially problematical in this regard) - where employees are selected for their readiness to accept authority, frightened they will lose their jobs, concerned mostly with staying clean within the hierarchy and intent upon ignoring all else.
The resulting business cultures have proven to very effectively promote the value-free into positions of authority - with disastrous consequences...