A Google-ized p2p search engine? Or a Google imbued with the best in p2p?
It’s on the horizon. A new European Commission funded research project aims to produce a prototype p2p search engine that’s been described as an attempt to create a “P2P Google”.
“The aim is to produce a system that offers higher quality results and more robustness than a centralised system such as Google,” says Dr. David Hales from Bologna University, a researcher working on the project and who, with Simon Patarin, wrote the famous How to cheat BitTorrent and why nobody does (PDF).
It is being implemented as a p2p system, users wouldn’t have to worry about being flooded by ads or having their personal information mined by parties unknown.
“It wouldn’t be owned or controlled by anyone other than the users themselves so there’d be no need for advertising and centralised censorship would not be possible,” Hales told us. “This as an attempt to produce a more democratic search engine, operated and controlled by users rather than corporations or governments.”
“P2P systems have become associated with illegal activities but this is a socially beneficial use for the technology.”
Professor Gerhard Weikum from the Max Planck Institute, who’s leading the effort, and which involves computer scientists from across Europe, says “We’re in the early stages of the project but are making rapid progress.”
“To achieve our goal we will need to make major theoretical and practical advances. We have some of the top European distributed systems scientists on our team and believe we can make a major advance in search engine technology in the exciting P2P domain.”
On-going work will be discussed at the European Conference on Complex Systems in Paris, 14-18th of November 2005. Thanks to p2pnet.
