The internet has become the largest repository of information that has ever existed, with more than half of the world’s population having access to the 2.5 million terabytes of data that are generated every day. And most of that access is gained through the most useful tools of the current day: search engines.
Powered by mechanisms like text recognition and prediction, algorithmic gathering of suggestions and similar results, and integration with many other services, search engines have become the pillars on which the internet of today stands on, hosting around 5 billion searches per day, and 77% of these searches are done using the biggest name in the business: Google.
Of course, a quick look at the situation makes you think that there is no problem with this, Google simply managed to become the more popular search engine by having clear technological advantages over its competitors, especially in the grounds of integration of services (Gmail, Youtube, using your Google account to log in the vast majority of platforms, etc.). However, a single company having access to such amounts of data, including personal search histories, can become troublesome, as they have the power to filter the results to benefit certain sites, mostly via paid advertisements, selling the top spots in the results page and charging for linking additional terms to a certain domain.
Strength In Numbers
Given how big and popular Google has become, it’s almost impossible to think any project or startup can come even close to their level. But what if they had a different approach? What Presearch offers is a new way of thinking about search engines, where the results are curated by the token-rewarded community members, and the entire algorithm runs safely on the blockchain. This means that a better service will be achieved as the network of Presearch users grows in size.
The use of blockchain allows for a number of benefits associated to decentralized searches, including: transparent rankings that level the playing field amongst all possible results, a decision-making process entirely run by the community (compared to a single corporation taking all the decisions for their financial benefit) and the ability to use the rewarded tokens to vote and fund on development projects.
Tough Terrain
Of course, this poses the challenge of developing a solid system that can support an increasing number of searches per second as the userbase grows with time, along with the challenge of creating a token that stays relevant within and outside the platform to keep the community motivated into participating in the addition and quality inspection of the results.
Their aim is to first work as a company, having full responsibility of the initial token sale, distribution and exchange of tokens, marketing and development of the search tool. But they plan on continuously developing a consensus algorithm that can support the projected number of searches per second the engine will need and establishing a DAO to later release it as a fully community-upkept platform.
If this happens, and they advertise their service well enough, we might be looking at the start of a new way of accessing data altogether, all under the control of a multitude of equal users, a truly democratic and decentralized gateway to what the internet has in offer.