On January 28th, 2021, Presearch, a blockchain-based startup, tweeted about a "Node-powered(Decentralized Search Engine". This is a huge step, in combating the Big Tech's monopoly, ensuring privacy on the internet, and promoting cryptocurrency to more people. But what is a "node-powered" engine and how does it operate? What's the difference between Google and Presearch? We will discuss both of these questions and more, in this article.
Many users are already aware of companies like Google constantly tracking them and monetizing their private information. Google claims that the only reason it keeps tabs on its users is to improve its recommendations, services, and general experience. Conveniently for Google, most people fall under this trap and readily hand over all their personal data to them.
Despite this, Google is still the most visited website on the web, with over 62 billion visits in 2019 alone and 40000 queries every second. Which results in over 3 billion queries daily. With all this power, Google is able to influence major world events, change people's perceptions and much much more.
This is where PRESEARCH comes in.
Presearch is a decentralized search engine that provides search choice, quality results, privacy, and rewards to those who want to end the search monopoly and take back the web.
The ambitious team of Presearch wants to provide a free internet, where every content creator has an equal chance of being featured and where your every move it's tracked and stored. On top of this, Presearch is community-driven, which means that everybody's interests are considered. The algorithms Presearch uses are totally transparent, meaning that anybody can contribute to their improvement. Furthermore, this ensures that Presearch doesn't have any bias towards a country, political party, or it's partners.
But how will Presearch achieve privacy and provide users with relevant results, while providing transparency? Blockchain technology.
"The new engine protects your privacy by preventing any node from accessing and passing along your information, such as your IP address, your device and browser details as well your location." - Presearch
When you make a search on Presearch, your query is sent to Node Gateway Server, which anonimizes your query, hiding your IP address and your other personal information. The Gateway then finds a Node, that is the most efficient, and sents the anonymous query to that node. The node then retrieves the results and sends them to Gateway, which in it's turns rewards the Node with PRE tokens. Gateway send the retrieved information to the web server, which shows it to you and rewards you with a PRE token.
Of course, Presearch has very challanges ahead of themselves. Combating Tech giants like Google, is no easy task. But since Presearch offers privacy, security, free tokens and much more, it's no surprise that more and more people are running away from Google.
I'm really excited to follow Presearch, and see the innovations they make in the field of decentralized search engines. I hope more companies can follow their footstep to ensure a secure and private internet for all.
