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.
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.
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.