Farewell Gigablast (For Now?)

I remember when Google and AlltheWeb shared their index size in the early 2000s, circa 4 billion and it was a flex of the time, and Gigablast was a fresh entrant.

Fair play to Matt Wells. I cannot say that I followed Gigablast's progress studiously over the past 15 years or so, but I understand he had the same issues as all other entrants, like being blocked as a non-whitelisted bot, lack of understanding of being an alternative entry point to the web and generally people choosing convenience.

He perhaps deserves more credit than what he has had, building a new frame of reference into the web that you don't see with major search engines.

Shame that these indie search engines can be found only by word of mouth... First time I hear about both of them (or maybe that tells something about my inability to find them).

Looking at mojeek, it seems to give nice results at the first try, let me torture it a bit more... I might have a new DDG-replacement.