Lessons I Learned from Creating Searx
The author reflects on their experience creating SearX, a self-hosted metasearch engine, and its impact on their views about search and privacy. They highlight the strengths of the SearX community while also acknowledging the inherent limitations of the metasearch model. The author introduces Hister, a new search tool that addresses these limitations by indexing content locally instead of relying on third-party engines.
- ▪The author is the original creator of SearX, which has evolved into the fork SearXNG.
- ▪SearX has limitations due to its reliance on third-party search engines, affecting privacy and result relevance.
- ▪Hister is a new search tool that indexes content locally, allowing for greater privacy and control over search results.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Some of you may already know that I am the original author of SearX, a self-hosted metasearch engine that is nowadays continued as the popular fork SearXNG. I stepped away from active development some time ago, but the project shaped how I think about search, privacy, and open source software in ways that are still very much with me today. Over seven years I reviewed and merged nearly 1500 pull requests from more than 150 contributors. The project significantly shaped how I approach search and privacy related issues. I want to share my biggest take aways here, along with the thinking that led me to start building Hister. A Community Worth Celebrating Before anything else, I want to say this clearly: the SearX community was the finest I have ever had the privilege of being part of.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Hister.
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