Show HN: My not-for-profit search engine with no ads, no AI, & all DDG bangs

Post by Intermernet » Mon, Dec 29, 2025, 2:05 PM UTC

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #17

UnmappedStack wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really interesting view, but I'm not sure I agree. So many amazing projects are truly free without the goal of profit yet their maintainers still do amazing work. I feel like part of the reason this works is because often the load is split between several maintainers (of which I hope to onboard soon, and have one or two offers already from people to contribute) and also the fact it's genuinely something enj…

There's a difference between awesome projects that don't have a recurring cost (i.e. open source software that users run themselves) and a search engine. You cannot physically run a search engine without real-world costs today. Those funds need to come from somewhere. And offering a good product at scale costs a lot of money.

Post by IshKebab » Mon, Dec 29, 2025, 3:11 PM UTC

UnmappedStack wrote: post #46

soldthat wrote: post #45

The fact that “no ads and no AI” reads like a luxury feature set in 2025 says a lot about the state of search. Nice reset to sane defaults.

Yeahhh I like to think of it as search like it's 2015...

Post by Marsymars » Mon, Dec 29, 2025, 4:13 PM UTC

Intermernet wrote: post #61

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between awesome projects that don't have a recurring cost (i.e. open source software that users run themselves) and a search engine. You cannot physically run a search engine without real-world costs today. Those funds need to come from somewhere. And offering a good product at scale costs a lot of money.

Just brainstorming here, but would a distributed search index be possible / usable with current network speeds and latency? I'm not sure how to set up the data structure to not require many high latency jumps, but maybe someone has solved this problem.

Post by sjs382 » Mon, Dec 29, 2025, 5:59 PM UTC

UnmappedStack wrote: post #25

Tiberium wrote: post #22

Right now it seems like the project is just a thin wrapper over Brave Search. Building a complete search engine is way harder than that. You could look into using https://github.com/MarginaliaSearch/MarginaliaSearch if you want to run a real search index - https://marginalia-search.com/ is powered by it.

Yup, it is pretty much just a better frontend for existing search. I want to build my own index and ranking algorithm in the future, but sadly it's quite resource intensive so it will depend on financial viability a bit in terms of timeframe.

Post by inetknght » Mon, Dec 29, 2025, 6:54 PM UTC

GaryBluto wrote: post #68

Why would I use this over Brave search if I were already using it? Especially when all it seems to add is a childish rant against LLMs, "G**gle" and "D*ckD*ckGo".