PreSearch (Decentralized Search Engine)

ivankrwrites (25)in #search • 5 years ago

The current model of web search is definitely broken.

At first glance, you can search for everything for free, but in reality, you pay a high price. And you pay for it with your personal information.

Actually, you might be stunned by how much data Google has about you.

• All of your searches (obviously)

• Your name, gender, and birthdate

• Your cellphone numbers

• Your home and workplace locations

• Everything you typed in their Translator

• Every email you received in Gmail

• Every video you watched on YouTube

• Every single move you have ever made while having GMaps installed

• All of your personal preferences (sports, movies, music, tech, food)

So, what?

It turns out, corporations like Google have exceptional control over the full flow of information that exists on the net. That’s what we call big data.

And they literally can do whatever they like with it.

Everything would’ve been fine if they were just keeping and using this information for more knowledge, and for technology improvements. But no, that’s not enough for them. They are taking all the data they have about you and they then sell it to advertisers and who knows to whom else.

Moreover, corporations are able to manipulate search results, based on your interactions with their search engine. And if you ask them about it, they will say that what is shown (or not) to you, when you try to find something on the web, is being decided only by their algorithms and by nothing else.

Yet, they will not disclose how exactly their search engine works, what has been and is being developed, or specifically what kind of data is being collected from you.

They just claim that everything they are doing is “what’s best for the users”.

PreSearch is changing the game…

In reality, search engines are today’s main entrance to the web.

Therefore, the world deserves an alternative service, which is open and transparent but also involves the community in the processes of product development and quality control.

What PreSearch is building right now is exactly that – an open, decentralized search engine, which puts the user’s expectation upfront, and which doesn’t deviate from the community’s “constitution”.

They are even adding curation rewards to the engine. Which is maybe the most important strategy that the team implies.

Each time you perform a search, they will pay you with PRE tokens.

So, you will earn 0.25 PRE for every single search you make. And you are allowed to make up to 32 rewarded searches per 24 hours.

Plus, they are working on a feature that will give you the opportunity to profit, if you select to be seeing ads on your starting page.

PreSearch funds their operations through a transparent advertising system, which enables advertisers to bid on keywords and sponsor results.

In version one, ads are displayed between the search and the result areas.

Also, if you want to advertise, you can purchase ads via an auction, by using PRE tokens. And in such a way, more usage will be driven within the ecosystem by itself.

Basically, the team is developing a search engine, which will benefit not only those who pay but will reward regular everyday users too.

What do they have?

Right now, PreSearch is a search extension, and also a complete search engine, which they’ve named DSearch.

Both of those perfectly suit Firefox, Chrome, and Brave browsers.

Still, you can opt to install the PreSearch extension and choose between the engine you prefer to use (Google, DuckDuckGo, or whichever you want).

So, you are not being limited in any way, and still able to earn PRE.

Profiting from search…

You can buy or sell your earned tokens directly on their marketplace:

https://marketplace.presearch.org/

Or buy merchandise and services from their store:

https://store.presearch.org/

You can also trade PRE tokens on exchanges.

For now, on ProBit, HitBTC, and Yobit (I don’t know anything about those), but it’s expected that PRE will soon appear on other exchanges too.

How are they able to do it?

Normally, to run a full index of the web is extraordinarily expensive.

As the team says: “If the index is decentralized, however, and distributed in a way that utilizes the computing resources shared by potentially millions of people (in exchange for PRE tokens), this cost can be mitigated significantly.”

Their model will basically enable community members to run browser extensions, which will act as web crawling and indexing nodes.

That would also build up the PreSearch index as more and more people start surfing the web through it.

“This would enable Presearch to get around one of the most difficult crawling challenges – getting blocked by webmasters. Members running nodes will earn PRE tokens in exchange for utilizing their computers and internet connections for PreSearch.”

“When users enter a term into the Presearch search box, their query will be sent to a query director that will use natural language processing to determine the content and intent of the query and match it against a series of query handlers that will retrieve the most relevant results and match them with the most appropriate user interface for display to the end-user.”

The team is also experimenting with a number of different models for how all of this could work.

They hope that the PreSearch platform can provide communities with significant autonomy over search results.

And they will effectively communicate the whole vision with developers, whom they will invite to join the PreSearch mission.

Here is the PreSearch whitepaper: https://www.presearch.io/uploads/WhitePaper.pdf