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Xonaly – Canada's Independent Search Engine

xonaly.com

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Re: Xonaly – Canada's Independent Search Engine

#12

Post by tiago-dot-dev »

cosmic_quanta wrote: post #5
Lyngbakr wrote: post #2

Something I couldn't find info about is how this is funded, given that it is ad free and doesn't sell user data. Is it supported by a nonprofit organisation or just paid for out of the developer's pocket?

This is a critical piece of information to convince me to switch to this. I'm quite interested though! Also, what's the context of "Built in Canada"? What's the point of mentioning this? Should I expect the results to be better for Canadian content?

It seems like it is funded by creator for now. It seems like they intend to fund it via professional acesa to its infrastructure.

Here is the bit that talks about it

https://xonaly.com/ethical-private-search-engine/

> How is Xonaly sustained? > Xonaly remains free and private for users by offering professional access to its infrastructure through the Xonaly API. This allows developers and organizations to build applications on top of a truly independent search engine, while supporting the long-term growth of the project.

Re: Xonaly – Canada's Independent Search Engine

#13

Post by tiago-dot-dev »

Lyngbakr wrote: post #2

Something I couldn't find info about is how this is funded, given that it is ad free and doesn't sell user data. Is it supported by a nonprofit organisation or just paid for out of the developer's pocket?

Via professional access to their infrastructure via its API

https://xonaly.com/ethical-private-search-engine/

How is Xonaly sustained? Xonaly remains free and private for users by offering professional access to its infrastructure through the Xonaly API. This allows developers and organizations to build applications on top of a truly independent search engine, while supporting the long-term growth of the project.

Re: Xonaly – Canada's Independent Search Engine

#14

Post by audreyfei »

cgh wrote: post #9
cosmic_quanta wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a critical piece of information to convince me to switch to this. I'm quite interested though! Also, what's the context of "Built in Canada"? What's the point of mentioning this? Should I expect the results to be better for Canadian content?

This is the founder: https://xonaly.com/about-the-founder/ I guess he’s psyched about being Canadian? Anyway, nothing about funding. The privacy-first stance is certainly welcome.

launching this on Canada Day (July 1) would be pretty cool

Re: Xonaly – Canada's Independent Search Engine

#15

Post by tejohnso »

Tiberium wrote: post #3

The search engine does indeed seem to be fully custom - the results for niche topics are quite bad, but that at least means it's not a Bing frontend, so it's forgivable. Although I wonder why the authors decided to go 100% custom instead of (partially?) reusing https://github.com/MarginaliaSearch/MarginaliaSearch for some of the core engine. On an unrelated note: why do some people use LLMs to write all the text in t…

The text seems like it's there as a basic low effort placeholder.

Maybe it's still a one person project and they don't want to spend their time crafting reasonable marketing fluff pages, so they relied on an LLM to generate that while they focus on the tech side of things.

Re: Xonaly – Canada's Independent Search Engine

#16

Post by andy99 »

Tiberium wrote: post #3

The search engine does indeed seem to be fully custom - the results for niche topics are quite bad, but that at least means it's not a Bing frontend, so it's forgivable. Although I wonder why the authors decided to go 100% custom instead of (partially?) reusing https://github.com/MarginaliaSearch/MarginaliaSearch for some of the core engine. On an unrelated note: why do some people use LLMs to write all the text in t…

I wondered if the whole thing was just a vibe coded weekend project. It’s hard to gauge the seriousness and level of effort but without some evidence to the contrary I’m guessing it’s all LLM generated.

Re: Xonaly – Canada's Independent Search Engine

#17

Post by Tiberium »

tejohnso wrote: post #15
Tiberium wrote: post #3

The search engine does indeed seem to be fully custom - the results for niche topics are quite bad, but that at least means it's not a Bing frontend, so it's forgivable. Although I wonder why the authors decided to go 100% custom instead of (partially?) reusing https://github.com/MarginaliaSearch/MarginaliaSearch for some of the core engine. On an unrelated note: why do some people use LLMs to write all the text in t…

The text seems like it's there as a basic low effort placeholder. Maybe it's still a one person project and they don't want to spend their time crafting reasonable marketing fluff pages, so they relied on an LLM to generate that while they focus on the tech side of things.

It could be true, but the more I look into it, the more I feel like it's not very genuine. For example, https://xonaly.com/privacy-policy/ has a very strong no third party claim, yet the actual xonaly.com homepage calls the Open-Meteo API for weather data from the user browser.
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