Begin October Metager made an announcement that the “normal” search was no longer possible. Metager is a free and open source meta search engine based in Germany that takes data protection and privacy for their users very seriously.
In normal search users could use Metager for free but with the addition of ads in their search results. Users that pay for their search can continue to use the meta search engine as before.
Apparently for their income Metager relied heavily on a deal they made with Yahoo to receive search results in return for advertising. Yahoo suddenly ended the contract because they would no longer be operating their business in Germany.
For users that demand data protection it’s sad that Metager now only has payed search available. There aren’t many (meta)search engines that offer good data protection and most people can or will not pay for search.
With their main stream of revenue gone Metager will at the most be a very small niche in the search engine market. It also demonstrates the importance of a solid revenue stream not relying on a single partner (e.g Yahoo).
I already used that payed version of Metager (in addition to DuckDuckGo) and I’ll most likely will continue to do so. But the future looks bleak for Metager. The only remaining stream of income are users that pay for search or donate to Metager. With this it will be hard to continue to pay the salaries of Metager employees or all other costs. In the coming months it will become clear if Metager will be able to survive in some way or the other.