About

ipfs-search.com is a Free and Open Source (FOSS) search engine for the Interplanetary Filesystem (IPFS). Our long-term goal is truly distributed search, by users, for users. Only by aligning platforms’ interests with user interests can technology help foster a free and democratic society.

Defending our freedom

As IPFS and Filecoin rise in popularity, the content published there will grow in quantity and quality. It would be a shame if our perspective on this data falls into the control of large companies, whose direct interest is to steer our attention and manipulate our behaviour. The ‘free’ services of the internet are not free; they are selling us as their product; our freedom of choice and our outlook on the world.

We strive for a search engine where the users are the owners, not the product, whose services are paid for through donations. We strive for solving the search problem, once and for all, minimizing the costs of running the service, so that search embodies the freedom we wish to see in our societies.

Open Source Coopetition

Since our launch in 2016 we have provided a fully neutral perspective on IPFS. In 2020, with help from the NGI0 Discovery fund, we started sharing daily snapshots of our index over IPFS. With both data and code available to the world, we provide full transparency over how search results are constituted and we enable anyone to fork our platform in case of censorship, bias or to improve on our efforts.

Our code is licensed as AGPL, requiring anyone who forks us to contribute back to the community, incentivizing competitors to cooperatie to the benefit of the users.