-premise

This idea is much easier to implement than it sounds. Actually you can
install and start using seeks (a p2p and meta search engine) right now, I
am using it and it's good enough even without peers (I find it more
comfortabe than google in fact). other p2p search engines like yacy
index the pages and do the rest so my idea is that if we make some small
servers we can have a p2p network of search that is totally independent
from centraliuzed searche engines



-why use it?

-simply on an intellectual/practical side of things having big companies
like google/microsoft/yahoo do the search means they will show you what
they want you to see, p2p search shows you what most people want to see
so it's more neutral. also the search may be partially done in local
which is good if your connection is not stable -or you can even just
search in your village network if the rest of the world is cut off ;)



-for users (try it first! :D)

if you just want to use a p2p search engine I suggest you install seeks
(or you could use a site that uses it but I know of none :P) this is the
download page http://seeks-project.info/wiki/index.php/Download (works
on the most used linux based free systems), you can use it instead of
google or stuff because it's really comfortable.

otherwise try yacy (http://yacy.net) it lets you index the sites you
want and look among the sites indexed by others, not as comfortable as
seeks but it's in java so it should work on any system that supprts java
(gave me some troubles though)



-I also put in easylazy steps how to install/set up seeks on ubuntu+firefox so you have no excuses for not trying it ;)

open the terminal and do the following:

>sudo add-apt-repository ppa:theli48/seeks
>sudo apt-get update
>sudo apt-get install seeks

all done!

now you go to your browser options and add localhost : 8250 as http proxy

eg for firefox Edit>>>options>>>advanced>network
click on network settings
and on the line of http proxy type localhost under ip address and 8250 under port

now to start using it you type http://s.s/websearch-hp. now add it to your search engine collection (in
firefox just click on the search bar menu and you'll find "add seeks") and you may forget goodle of bing! have fun! :)

-The project

well, you could just use the p2p search from your pc and all well, but
we can do more by setting up a community search engine, I am thinking of
a small server that automatically indexes the community pages and some
others that may be of interest (or simply all you can if your server is
powerful enough) trough yacy AND sdds the yacy search to the seeks
search, this way people with a simple browser can use seeks or yacy from
the community page and the others will have the support of the local
server (which is always online unlike  the other peers).

ah and I suggest seks is added to the http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/OSE_Linux_Build