MetaGer, the privacy-focused search engine of the non-profit association SUMA-EV, will no longer exist in its familiar form. It will still be possible to use the token-financed service. Nothing will change for members and users who use MetaGer with a key. However, it is the ad-financed search that has ensured the main part of the revenue and thus the operation and further development. Unfortunately, this “normal” search is no longer possible as of today. This is just as dramatic as it sounds: it is no longer possible for SUMA-EV to continue to employ staff. All employees are being made redundant, as are the offices.
Yahoo terminates contract
The reason is that Yahoo terminated our contracts unilaterally and without any notice on Monday. Upon request, we were merely informed that Yahoo would no longer be operating the business in Germany. For us as the operator of MetaGer, this means on the one hand that we no longer receive any advertising revenue, which has been used to pay for office space, servers and employees. On the other hand, we will also no longer be able to deliver our search results as part of the ad-financed search. Only with Yahoo did we have a central deal to receive search results in return for advertising. This no longer applies.
We were well aware of this dependency. We had had an uneasy feeling about it for some time. We realized that advertising was on increasingly shaky ground and that focusing on it was a risk. Searching with a paid key was a first step towards gaining independence from Yahoo. Months ago, we also developed concrete plans to meet the challenge of declining advertising revenue and the threat of termination. Our goal was to be available as MetaGer's own advertising partner. The plan was to acquire customers who would place advertisements on MetaGer so that we could use this direct advertising revenue to buy the search results on our own terms. We also wanted to work on the membership development of the association. If the current membership growth continued, we would be independent enough in a few years. But in the end this all came too late. Ultimately, it is tragic that we were unable to develop a viable solution quickly enough.
And now?
What happens now? MetaGer's supporting association, SUMA-EV, will continue to exist. It will also still be possible to buy a key for the token-financed search and search with MetaGer. With this model, MetaGer will still be able to query paid search engines and deliver the results without tracking as usual. We will also continue to work for SUMA-EV and MetaGer on a voluntary basis to ensure the operation of this small niche, but this will of course be on a very small scale and not what MetaGer is all about. MetaGer-Maps can also no longer be operated in this context. The plans to become bigger and to one day provide a really good alternative to “the big players” with its own index (or European index) have of course died with this termination by Yahoo. And that is what is really sad.
There are several ways to support us in this difficult situation. Firstly, it would be important to remain or become a member right now. This community could perhaps lead to projects in the future that we don't even have on our radar at the moment. Donations are of course also welcome, as they help to ensure that the employees' salaries can still be paid for another two months. On the other hand, the purchase of keys for our ad-free search helps us. In the interests of data protection and privacy, it is important to remain loyal to the small “MetaGer” project.
With deep gratitude for the past 28 years in the MetaGer project, the SUMA-EV Board:
Dominik Hebeler, Manuela Branz, Phil Höfer, Carsten Riel
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