[01jonny01]

Google quietly announced that Programmable Search (ex-Custom Search) won’t allow new engines to “search the entire web” anymore. New engines are capped at searching up to 50 domains, and existing full-web engines have until Jan 1, 2027 to transition.

If you actually need whole-web search, Google now points you to an “interest form” for enterprise solutions (Vertex AI Search etc.), with no public pricing and no guarantee they’ll even reply.

This seems like it effectively ends the era of indie / niche search engines being able to build on Google’s index. Anything that looks like general web search is getting pushed behind enterprise gates.

I haven’t seen much discussion about this yet, but for anyone who built a small search product on Programmable Search, this feels like a pretty big shift.

Curious if others here are affected or already planning alternatives.

UPDATE: I logged into Programmable Search and the message is even more explicit: Full web search via the "Search the entire web" feature will be discontinued within the next year. Please update your search engine to specify specific sites to search. With this link: https://support.google.com/programmable-search/answer/123971...

[zitterbewegung]

I know that duckduckgo uses Microsoft Bing Custom search and honestly it is a much more robust system since you don't have to worry about Google axing it. https://www.customsearch.ai

[embedding-shape]

Instead you worry about Microsoft axing it? Sure, it might take 3 years instead of 6 months, and the shutdown period would be 1 year instead of 1 month, but hardly either are long-term solutions.

[thayne]

Bing Custom Search was discontinued last year. Although duckduckgo probably has some kind of special contract with Microsoft.

[01jonny01]

Important Email Update from Google:

Dear Programmable Search Engine user,

Thank you for contacting us via the Web Search Products Interest Form. We have received your feedback and are actively reviewing the specific use cases you shared.

We are writing to share important details regarding the transition plan and the available solutions for your search needs.

1. For Unrestricted Web Search: Future Web Search Service

For partners requiring unrestricted "Search the entire web" capabilities, we are developing a new enterprise-grade Web Search Service. As you evaluate your future needs, please be aware of the commercial terms planned for this new service:

Pricing: USD $15 CPM (Cost Per Mille / 1,000 requests).

Minimum Commitment: A minimum monthly fee of USD $30,000 will apply.

We’ll release more information on this service later in 2026. Existing 'Search the entire web' engines remain functional until January 1, 2027.

2. For AI & Advanced Search: Google Vertex AI

We strongly encourage you to explore Google Vertex AI as another option for partners who need enterprise search and AI capabilities across 50 or fewer domains. Vertex AI offers powerful capabilities for:

Grounded Generation: Connecting your AI agents to your own data and/or to Google Search to provide accurate, up-to-date responses.

Custom Data Search: Building enterprise-grade search engines over your own data and specific websites.

This solution is available now and is designed to scale with your specific application needs.

Clarification on Current Service Status:

While you evaluate which path fits your business needs, please remember the timeline for your current implementations:

Existing Projects: If you have an existing Programmable Search Engine configured to "Search the entire web," your service will continue to function until January 1, 2027. You have the full year to plan your migration.

New Projects: As of January 20, 2026, new engines created in the Programmable Search Engine admin console are restricted to "Site Search Only" (specific domains only).

Later in 2026 we’ll provide you with more updates regarding the new Web Search Service and the means to express your desire to use it to power your web search experiences.

Sincerely,

Programmable Search Engine Team

[saltysalt]

I built my own web search index on bare metal, index now up to 34m docs: https://greppr.org/

People rely too much on other people's infra and services, which can be decommissioned anytime. The Google Graveyard is real.

[orf]

Number of docs isn’t the limiting factor.

I just searched for “stackoverflow” and the first result was this: https://www.perl.com/tags/stackoverflow/

The actual Stackoverflow site was ranked way down, below some weird twitter accounts.

[tosti]

This is pretty cool. Don't let the naysayers stop you. Taking a stab at beating Google at their core product is bravery in my book. The best of luck to you!

[Tenemo]

That's super cool! Do you have any plans to commercialize it or it's just a pet project?

[lolive]

Lol, a GooglePlus URL was mentionned on a webpage i browsed this week.#blastFromThePast

[johnofthesea]

I tested it using a local keyword, as I normally do, and it took me to a Wikipedia page I didn’t know existed. So thanks for that.

[bflesch]

Thanks for sharing, this is really impressive.

Can you talk a bit about your stack? The about page mentions grep but I'd assume it's a bit more complex than having a large volume and running grep over it ;)

Is it some sort of custom database or did you keep it simple? Do you also run a crawler?

[jfindley]

Unfortunately the index is the easy part. Transforming user input into a series of tokens which get used to rank possible matches and return the top N, based on likely relevence, is the hard part and I'm afraid this doesn't appear to do an acceptable job with any of the queries I tested.

There's a reason Google became so popular as quickly as it did. It's even harder to compete in this space nowadays, as the volume of junk and SEO spam is many orders of magnitude worse as a percentage of the corpus than it was back then.

[1718627440]

The input on the results page doesn't work, you always need to return to the start page on which the browser history is disabled. That's just confusing behaviour.

[renegat0x0]

I made also something for my own search needs. It's just an SQLite table of domains, and places. I have your search engine there also ;-)

https://github.com/rumca-js/Internet-Places-Database

Demo for most important ones https://rumca-js.github.io/search

[1718627440]

You should consider filtering by input language. Showing the same Wikipedia article in different languages is not helpful when I am searching in English. Also you may unify by entries by URL, it shows the same URL, just with different publish dates, which is interesting and might be useful, but should maybe be behind a toggle, as it is confusing at first.

[dust-jacket]

This is mad but cool. Keep at it.

[salawat]

It's been clear for the last decade that we have to wean ourselves off of centralized search indexes if only to innoculate the Net against censorship/politically motivated black holing.

I can only weep at this point, as the heroes that were the Silent and Greatest generations (in the U.S.), who fought hard to pass on as much institutional knowledge as possible through hardcore organization and distribution via public and University library, have had that legacy shit on by these ad obsessed cretins. The entirety of human published understanding; and we make it nigh impossible for all but the most determined to actually avail themselves of it.

[raincole]

> “search the entire web”

TIL they allowed that before. It sounds a bit crazy. Like Google is inviting people to repackage google search itself and sell it / serve with their own ads.

[MrGilbert]

You know, back in the days, the web used to be more open. Also - just because you CAN do something, doesn't mean you HAVE to.

[shevy-java]

It basically means that Google is now transitioning into a private web.

Others have to replace Google. We need access to public information. States can not allow corporations to hold us here hostage.

[whs]

I tried it and contributed to searx. It didn't give the same result as Google, and it also have 10k request rate limit (per month I believe). More than that you'll have to "contact us"

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

If its Motion for a Partial Stay is denied, or if it loses on appeal, then under this Final Judgement Google will be forced to offer syndicated "full web" search to Qualified Competitors

https://dn710204.ca.archive.org/0/items/gov.uscourts.dcd.223...

[throwaway_20357]

What are some of the niche search engines build on Google's index affected by this?

[doublerabbit]

Kagi

[vagab0nd]

Damn, I just wrote a note "search is free" in my aggressively-automate-everything-using-llms personal project plan.md. I guess not anymore.