Would you pay to use a search engine? A UK startup is betting you will

Better Internet Search seeks a new ad-free funding model

Would you pay to use a search engine that gave you clean unbiased results and no ads? A UK startup is betting you will.

While most search engines make their money through advertising and tracking, Better Internet Search is both privacy-preserving and completely ad-free, says CEO and founder of the Scottish startup of the same name, Dr Gordon Povey.

The search engine, currently in Beta but due for release later this year, will charge you one token for every search you perform. The dynamic pricing structure is still being worked on, but it's likely one token will be about 1p.

As someone who uses search a great deal, that sounds like it could soon mount up, we put it to Povey.

But that's just one half of the equation, he responded, because you will also be able to earn tokens by searching for products or otherwise contributing to the engine.

Unlike with Google, for example, on Better Internet Search, search and shopping (Product Search) are completely separate. Povey's start-up is busy recruiting retailers and Product Search will have a separate index and ranking algorithm. People responding to promotions and buying through the channel will earn tokens while shopping - hopefully enough to offset search charges for the average user. For retailers, there's the advantage that users will be incentivised to browse their products.

"We reward users with tokens for things that add revenue, and for things that cost we take them away," Povey said.

Still, it's hard to compete with free.

But, Povey points out, the ad-ridden Internet is not free - even setting aside the ‘you-are the product' argument - because all those ads and trackers use up bandwidth and data (estimated at 25 - 40 per cent of all internet traffic) and CPU cycles, which we pay for and which also slows up services. Then there's the manipulation of results based on personal data.

"It's not just the money; the mingling of advertisements and search results ends up biassing those results," said Povey. "The ultimate goal, one we believe we've got right here, is an alternative model to fund things like search."

The search engine itself, like many alternative engines, uses the Bing API, with a few other sources federated as well. Adding new sources could be a way of earning tokens. Computing tried the Beta and it is certainly very quick and accurate, although of course this was not the production version. Product Search and Maps are not yet operational. Povey insists it will be faster than the competition, owing to the lack of ads being served in the background.

In the top right corner of the screen sits a token counter, which decrements by one with every search. Clicking through, there's an option to buy new tokens in batches of £10 or £25, or later in the cryptocurrency of your choice.

Which brings us to the next big difference between Better Internet Search and traditional engines: the internal token market is controlled by a blockchain.

Billed by president and co-funder Kurt Nielsen, Partisia Blockchain is a "Web 3.0 blockchain, a mix of a blockchain and a system to orchestrate secure multi-party computation, which is solving primarily for privacy".

Partisia records the allocation of tokens and how they are earned and spent. It also has cross-chain and off-chain connectivity, meaning tokens can be exchanged for other currencies, and it holds the identity of the users.

Interestingly users of the system are not anonymous - complete anonymity and retail being a tricky mix - but their actions are private.

"It's about adding privacy to the existing ecosystem, which is something we've been working on for a long time," Neilsen said.

Denmark-based Partisia uses a system of zero-knowledge computation that means confidentially is assured even while the transacting parties are known, which makes it different from, say, bitcoin in which parties are pseudonymous but transactions are public, or Monero where both are obfuscated.

In the manner of homomorphic encryption, computations may be made on private data without exposing the data itself, which leaves the user in control about how much information is shared. In this way personalised services can be built up without compromising privacy.

The levels of privacy or transparency and transparency can be dialled up or down, meaning it can support different types of applications, Neilsen said, so search may just be the start.

The project recently received funding from the Next Generation Internet Trust, a European Commission initiative that aims to shape the development and evolution of the Internet.

"What we're trying to prove is that this is a disruptive model, not just for ourselves but for other aspects of the internet, which is why we've got the support of the Next Generation Internet Trust," said Povey.