Runnaroo search engine has been taken down indefinitely

Runnaroo search engine has been taken down indefinitely(runnaroo.com)

29 points by tomr_stargazer 5 years ago | 18 comments

chris_f 5 years ago |

Thank you for all the kind words! I'm the creator of Runnaroo.

Runnaroo started as just a fun experiment, but it quickly became apparent that you could launch a meta-search engine better than just about everything out there (including DDG [0]), and I was frankly surprised how quickly it was embraced by such a large number of people (it's Show:HN reached the #2 spot [1]).

The challenge then became how to fund the cost of the site in an ethical way in line with the site's core principles. I started looking at different solutions [2], including becoming the first search engine to implement Web Monetization, but I never really even came close.

I believe Runnaroo will live on in some iteration, I just have to figure out what that would be.

Also, if you used Runnaroo and liked it, please don't hesitate to reach out (anything AT runnaroo.com). It has been a solo project, but I'm sure the future will involve more collaboration.

I would also be interested in sharing the story of how Runnaroo evolved over the last year, and the different experiences of launching a search engine if anyone is interested or has a platform for those conversations.

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[0] Don't take my word for it - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24248666

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23771131

[2] https://coil.com/p/runnaroo/Privacy-and-Search-Engine-Moneti...

lukemulks 5 years ago | |

You've managed to bring better results than the leading private search engine, with a 1-person operation.

You're a giant. Sad to see Runnaroo dim the lights, but appreciate the experience had with it over the past year!

slaughtr 5 years ago |

After using Runnaroo as my default search engine for the last ~9 months, I gotta say this is a huge bummer. The results were great 99.9% of the time and everything worked wonderfully or gave me a way to quickly get to a better service (such as image search -> Google image search). Quite a shock getting a "Not sure if it will be back" message when trying to do a quick search.

RIP

chris_f 5 years ago | |

Thank you so much for the kind words! It was very much a labor of love as there was no tracking, ads, or really any significant attempt at monetization.

I was actually happy keeping it up for all of the users such as yourself, but it started to become not worth the effort as it grew and more and more people would abuse the service.

Runnaroo is a one-man side project operation, and I hope it has shown what is possible in the search engine space with minimal resources.

slaughtr 5 years ago | | |

What would it take to keep Runnaroo online? I've combed through enough apache logs to have a rough idea of what kind of bot traffic you might be dealing with, but not entirely sure of how best to mitigate other than naive IP blocking and scaling out to meet traffic demands...

noirbot 5 years ago |

While I understand the difficulty of running something like this, I'm sad to lose it. I found it to be a truly excellent search experience that I'd been recommending to friends for a while now. Hopefully there's some way this gets picked up for something bigger or finds some way to survive, and good on the dev for making it work for as long as they did!

coders77 5 years ago |

It's sad to see Runnaroo get taken down.It was a great search engine you had.For now i'll switch back to https://duckduckgo.com/lite/

qt123 5 years ago |

Thanks Chris!, such a great effort. I used runnaroo as my default search engine for a while and loved it. Great things to come on your path, thanks for sharing and demonstrate things one person can do to the web experience. Blessings.

cycomanic 5 years ago |

Thank you so much for running runnaroo. It was my default search engine for the last 6 months and I thought it was by far the best privacy focused search around.

Sad to see it go, but I understand.

glotka 5 years ago |

I have been using your search engine for several months. A real shame, it's the best performing of all the privacy focused ones I've tried.

Thanks for your work and effort.

unpixer 5 years ago |

In my experience there's been an inexorable decline in Google search result quality over the past few years (not to mention a corresponding increase in reports of tracking and privacy infringements). Having tried a variety of alternative front ends and engines (Startpage/Ixquick, Ecosia, DuckDuckGo, Qwant, Mojeek), Runnaroo delivered consistently enough to become my browser default.

And now it's gone.

tomr_stargazer 5 years ago |

Right now, all searches return this text for me:

"I've taken Runnaroo down due to the ever increasing number of bots scraping the site.

Not sure if it will be back.

Thank you to all of those who have used Runnaroo over the last year!

I'm going for a run.

-Chris"

Accacin 5 years ago |

Hey, I've been using your search engine since I saw your Show HN post. Sad it's gone but I understand, thanks for putting it out there and not compromising on your core principles.

freeCandy 5 years ago |

Thank you for making runnaroo. It was a really good search engine, I didn't have to trade off my privacy for performance.

Now I'll have to start looking for a viable replacement.

beprogrammed 5 years ago |

A sad day indeed, Runnaroo was a great search engine.

cxqtheresh 5 years ago |

Been using runnaroo as my default search engine for ~10 months. Shocked to see the message. Thanks for this great project, godspeed.

progre 5 years ago |

Sad to see it go, I've been using it as default and been very happy with it