You know, this looks very interesting actually. I wouldn't be so bold as to say that it's "taking on Google", but it's a great idea. For example, right now it looks like yacy.net is down (maybe because of us, btw) - but you can just install it on your own Linux-based machine and you can still search the network, heck there's even an apt repository.
From there you get your own search engine, which you can even use to only search your LAN or private network. You can not only use that to search the distributed database, but also crawl your own sites, to improve the results for your community.
Think about it: no more profiling of your searches, no more dependency on a central authority for results. More importantly, no more single point of failure for the collective knowledge of mankind. Seems to me like a good goal.
That is a pretty good start, I would say. Of course we shouldn't expect the results to be better or even close to Google's, but if we all jump in and help this project, this could become something decent.
Or we could just sit back in our usual armchair specialist posture and say it's all crap. This is slashdot after all...
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