YaCy
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| Original author(s) | Michael Christen |
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| Developer(s) | YaCy Community |
| Stable release |
1.92 / 26 December 2016
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| Operating system | Cross-platform |
| Type | Overlay network, Search engine |
| License | GPLv2+ |
| Website | www.yacy.net/en |
YaCy (pronounced "ya see") is a free distributed search engine, built on principles of peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. Its core is a computer program written in Java distributed on several hundred computers, as of September 2006[update], so-called YaCy-peers. Each YaCy-peer independently crawls through the Internet, analyzes and indexes found web pages, and stores indexing results in a common database (so called index) which is shared with other YaCy-peers using principles of P2P networks. It is a free search engine that everyone can use to build a search portal for their intranet and to help search the public internet clearly.
Compared to semi-distributed search engines, the YaCy-network has a decentralised architecture. All YaCy-peers are equal and no central server exists. It can be run either in a crawling mode or as a local proxy server, indexing web pages visited by the person running YaCy on his or her computer. (Several mechanisms are provided to protect the user's privacy). Access to the search functions is made by a locally running web server which provides a search box to enter search terms, and returns search results in a similar format to other popular search engines.
YaCy is available on Windows, Mac and GNU/Linux.
YaCy search engine is based on four elements:
The information society of the 21st century is based on free access to all public information. There is a huge focus on transparency, accountability and accessibility of information. YaCy aims to enable this free access to information effectively and realistically. Therefore, while major search engines of the global corporations are closed systems and their search technology is not transparent and comprehensible, YaCy provides an open-source and free search solution. Everyone can see how information is obtained for the search engine and displayed to the user.
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Wikipedia