[Fordec]

Can the script on this then be flipped? Build a search engine, clearly smaller in scope and commercial utility, that if a site links to a payment or ad network, de-rank it heavily. Then the end result should be in theory, filled with what one would consider the "old" internet, primarily blogs and sites not trying to sell you things or abuse your data.

None of the large companies would do it, but that would be the point.

[JumpCrisscross]

Introducing: Kagi.

[sph]

That's not what Kagi does. Nor does its "Small Web" search mode, as it only searches blogs that have been manually added to a specific GitHub repo (so for most part is a collection of US tech blogs - not very diverse at all)

No VC-backed or commercial search engine would do what OP is talking about. But I can see a use for a niche search engine that ranks websites inversely proportional to the number of trackers and ad networks they depend on. Heck, I would pay for that, but I'm a nerd.

Maybe marginalia.nu would like this idea.

[baxtr]

What’s the reason that search engine would ask for a login? (Like Kagi does)

[Ferret7446]

Those sites don't exist any more. Not literally of course, but effectively. There's probably only a couple tens of thousand if I had to guess (and many of them abandoned blogs with a couple dozen pages of no note, hosted by some server that has not yet been unplugged because it's physically lost). Also, good luck trying to find them (either electronically or physically).

(And I say that as someone who owns such a site.)

Case in point, I wanted to link to http://bash.org/?5273, but bash.org no longer exists.

[farseer]

You can use Wikipedia's built in search for that I guess.