MetaGer is a privacy-focused search engine that is run by a German non-profit organization. One of its appeals, apart from its focus on privacy, was that you could run searches across multiple search engines.
It also included an interesting feature to search within search results, and to maintain a personal blacklist.
Up until now, you could use an advertisement-powered version or a paid version of the search engine. This changed this week when the maintainers of MetaGer announced that they cannot offer the free version anymore.
The organization claims that Yahoo has terminated contracts that allowed them to run a free version of the search engine with ads.
The version contributed the most to the revenue of the organization. Most expenses were paid from that revenue. With that revenue dropping to zero, MetaGer says that it cannot afford to offer the free version of the search engine anymore.
While that is not the end of MetaGer, as the paid version remains available, it will push the search engine even more into a niche.
About the paid version: The paid version works with tokens. A search requires one token and one hundred token cost $1. In other words, you pay $1 for every 100 searches on the MetaGer platform.
Plans were underway to reduce the dependency on Yahoo
The maintainers admit that they were aware of the Yahoo dependency. Yahoo could make the business collapse like a house of cards if it would terminate the contract.
First steps to reduce the dependency on Yahoo were undertaken. The introduction of a paid ad-free option added a new revenue source.
Next, the organization had plans to introduce its own advertising platform on the site. This would have allowed MetaGer to broker deals with partners directly and earn direct advertising revenue. It would have cut the middlemen out of the equation as well.
Paid memberships increased, but it would have taken several years before full independence according to the organization.
The future of MetaGer
MetaGer continues to be available, albeit only as a paid search engine. Users who want to use the search engine need to buy tokens to do so.
Development and maintenance is reduced, and operation will be reduced to a “very small scale” to make sure the search engine can survive.
Users of MetaGer can help the project through donations or by becoming paid members. Payment options include sending cash per letter or through one of the many available online payment options.
Closing Words
Whether MetaGer can manage with donations and the paid version alone remains to be seen. It is unclear if an agreement with another search engine, Microsoft’s Bing comes to mind, could change the situation for the organization.
Have you heard of MetaGer or even used the search engine? What is your take on the development? Feel free to leave a comment down below.
I use 12 search engines and MetaGer is (was?) one of them, and not the least, mainly because of all its valuable specifics. Their new status is understandable when correctly described, explained within this article.
For my user case I’m very unlikely to adopt MetaGer’s new paid plan, not because of the cost which is IMO and decent and affordable, but because 1- I don’t search the Web that much, 2- other 11 search engines here besides one (DuckDuckGo set as default) are bookmarked more as alternatives than as regularly accessed engines, 3- I possibly pay only for a quality and a diversity of features I cannot get otherwise, generally speaking, given I’m no philanthropist even if i admire those who are.
FYI I’ve discovered two interesting sites IMO worth being mentioned in the scope of Search Engines :
1- A search engine : [https://stract.com/] :
“Stract is an open source search engine where the user has the ability to see exactly what is going on and customize almost everything about their search results. It’s a search engine made for hackers and tinkerers just like ourselves. No more searches where some of the terms in the query arent used, and the engine tries to guess what you really meant. You get what you search for.”
2- The Search Engine Map [https://www.searchenginemap.com/]
“Welcome to the Search Engine Map. Here you will find all search engines which offer English-language results that the world has to offer, what type of search engine they are and where they get their organic results from.”
NOTE : I’m not sure this map is a 100% reliable given, i.e., MetaGer appears to be related only to Bing, hence not as mentioned in the article across multiple search engines.
I recall using MetaGer a couple of times, but wasn’t impressed by the results. Understandable if Yahoo is where they obtained their results from, but I wasn’t aware of that at the time.
Nowadays though I just use Qwant and occasionally DDG, but if either of those two fail to find what I’m looking for I’ll use the nuclear option and fire up Google. Give Google their due though. They do provide results which lesser search engines never find, but it comes at a cost.
I switched from F-Droid’s FOSS phone app on my Android phone a few weeks ago because the app doesn’t seem to have a ‘missed call’ notification and went back to using Google’s calling app. But yesterday I started getting ads on it when I selected a number I wanted to call. I thought I must have entered the wrong details in the app and hung up. But when I selected that same number again the ads returned. So back to the FOSS app again even without its missed call option it’s still better than being bombarded with ads.
I used to use this search engine and enjoyed it quite a bit a few years ago however it became clear that this was turning into a paid for search engine and as much as I wish them the best I doubt this will pay off. Paid for search engines are just not something I see myself using. I also dislike their payment structures.
For payment search engines are going to be a hard sell considering most of us have grown up with search engines being free so when faced with a pay for search engine it becomes a case of this is not worth it.
I am at the point in my life where I have no interest in adopting another bill.