How Colin Pape is building a decentralized search engine with Presearch

0:02I'm Ashton Addison from BlockWorks Capital for Investment Pitch Media and The Crypto Coin Show. And today on Blockchain Interviews, we have Colin Pape, the founder and CEO of Presearch. Colin, welcome to the show and thanks for taking the time to come on. Hey Addison, thanks so much for having me. Appreciate it. You're very welcome. I'm excited to dive

0:20into the world of privacy-focused decentralized search engines. I think it's a huge necessity moving forward, especially in the world that we are living in right now. Uh and I'm excited to learn what your team is working on, but first of all, I would love for you to kick off our conversation with just an overview of Presearch and some of those solutions

0:40that your team has developed. Awesome. Thanks. Yeah, so uh we're we're building a decentralized search engine. Uh it's a community-driven project, so uh you know, not venture capital backed, uh no ties to Silicon Valley, uh kind of all your your traditional trappings I think of uh other search players. And uh we're really just trying to build a search engine that is is by the people

1:06for the people. Uh one that provides them with a a way to search privately and uh to kind of participate in the ecosystem more actively than as just a user, basically. So, we reward people with uh Presearch tokens when they run their searches through the the platform. And uh we also uh power the infrastructure of the the system uh with user nodes. We've got

1:33uh a testnet that we're currently running and a mainnet that's going live a little later this year. We've currently got about 12,000 user nodes that are uh on the testnet. And we reward those uh infrastructure providers with Presearch tokens as well. And then to create demand on the other side of the equation, we have uh a platform that we developed that uses

1:53something called keyword staking. And so, uh unlike a traditional advertising platform where it's, you know, uh a denominated in US dollars or, you know, local fiat currency and it's uh auction-based cost per click, uh we essentially have no real cost per click. At at some point that is probably going to be a thing, but uh for kind of the foreseeable future, uh it's it's

2:17really just about staking. So, you choose whichever keyword you want your ads to show up under and uh you stake your tokens to that keyword. Whoever stakes the most has their ad displayed. Uh but, uh just like with regular staking, if you uh cancel your ad, then the tokens are returned to your account. So, there's really no actual cost. So, that's kind of how how the model works

2:39and yeah, Vision is just uh building a I mean, search is super critical to the the, you know, future and freedom of the internet. Uh we've got massive centralization happening. Uh 92% of uh all searches run through Google. Second biggest search engine doing this is basically YouTube, another Google property. And so, uh you know, uh trying to just provide an

3:03alternative that uh isn't uh you know, kind of in bed with all the uh existing uh uh you know, powers that be like like Google appears to be. So. Definitely. Yeah, I agree, Colin, and great background there. And I didn't know it was still 92%. I would think, you know, we're living in the blockchain world and we think everyone thinks like us. Uh but, unfortunately, they're still

3:26just use the default, you know, and they're probably using Internet Explorer as well or something like that. Um yep. But, uh you know, uh and the advertising model you mentioned there, that's really interesting where you're staking and I think that could be something that could get a lot of traction. Um but, I want to take a step back just to the general

3:43search engine to start. And I think most people that aren't tech-savvy, they don't really understand how search engines work. Um and you don't necessarily need to, but they can work a decentralized search engine is going to work differently than than a centralized one. Maybe you can elaborate a little bit more on, you know, what's the difference between a

4:03regular person using Google as a search engine, and then something like DuckDuckGo as a search engine, and then using Presearch. Sure. Yeah, so so I mean, there there's kind of various stages uh to the the project. So, right now uh you could think of it as it it's almost more of a meta search engine, uh and it's it's enabling us to leverage uh existing indexes uh while we build our

4:27own on top of it to replace it. One of the the biggest challenges in search is something called uh the long tail of search. So, uh you've got, you know, maybe half of your your queries are kind of, you know, the most common, let's say, million searches. And those ones are fairly easy to build an index around, but then you've got another 50% of traffic and

4:47searches that are on these just totally obscure uh uh sometimes uh keywords, and uh in in some cases, and in actually quite a few cases, it's stuff that's never even been searched before. And so, trying to determine the relevance of uh you know, such a uh massive amount of content, and uh with search, if you don't have quality answers for every query, uh

5:13people will quickly turn away, and they'll end up back at, you know, Google uh or or, you know, uh DuckDuckGo, which is basically uh kind of a a skin on on Bing. Really, there's there's, you know, two to three search engines in the world that have actually built their own entire index. You've got Google, and you've got Bing, and then out of uh Russia, there's another one called uh

5:33Yandex, and they've kind of got their own indexes, and then, you know, the DuckDuckGos and StartPages and all the others are are essentially leveraging these other indexes because it's just such a a massive uh challenge. Uh Bing spent more than $5 billion dollars out their long tail index. So, uh uh so we're currently kind of at a point where we're we're developing this

5:53infrastructure that enables user nodes to be run from all over the world. Those are basically a layer that protects the privacy of the user and enables us to you know, decentralize our infrastructure so that we can pay for that infrastructure in a crypto token. We're essentially trying to like minimize all of our fiat outlays for the project we can get into

6:17a position where we can be like a full you know, Dow that doesn't really have any ties to the traditional financial world. And so so it's it's kind of you know, a step-by-step process and and so right now we're building up this layer of nodes that we're currently using essentially to you know, hit all these other data sources but in the process you know, starting to build our own index

6:41and then over time we start layering more and more jobs into this layer of infrastructure and that then enables us just to become more independent over time essentially. So yeah, it's it's really I I think you know, for the end user you you actually want it to be more or less imperceptible that they're not using you know, a traditional search engine like Google

7:04which I mean there's a reason why they have 92% of usage. They've done a really good job from a product standpoint. So you know, you don't want to necessarily you know, totally try to revamp things but there's certainly a lot of room for for innovation and for us it's just more about you know, having the community participate. We've got a a system that uses these open source

7:27community packages. So basically anybody can go in to our GitHub repo and they can download you know, the information that they need to build these and then they can basically get triggered by certain keywords. So we're working on like an NFT uh package right now. So, if anybody's query has the word NFT in it, it will go out to OpenSea and some of the other uh you know, NFT data sources

7:51and and have a dedicated NFT search UI above the regular uh search results. And so, you can do that for like a whole bunch of different things and we see that as really being a key competitive differentiator over time as we get those all built up by community members. Definitely, that's really cool and and I like what you're doing with that. And um I I It's interesting that you mentioned

8:11about the indexes there. I wasn't aware that uh that Duck was using the Bing index and I I'm I think more people probably use Duck than than Bing. You know, it's one of those Yep. uh Internet Explorer things where it's like, "Why are we using Microsoft products?" I don't know. Um Right. And but um you know, Google with their huge dominance and owning the Android

8:32system, you know, it's pretty hard to uh compete. But, I I did see in the news that on Google's Android in Europe and in in the UK, they're adding in Presearch as one of the default search options into the operating system. So, that's pretty cool. Uh congratulations on that and maybe you can talk about that achievement and what that sort of means for Presearch.

8:55Yeah, thanks. Yeah, no, definitely a really big win for the the project and even just blockchain in in general, I would say from a mass adoption standpoint. It's, you know, one of the uh more mainstream and and kind of you know, larger scale uh wins. Uh you know, something like uh 150 to 200 million Android installs in in Europe each year. And uh every time

9:19that happens, yeah, it generally worked before that you uh just got Google by default. That was, you know, a large part of their uh go-to-market strategy and and you know, why they came out with the operating system and you know, it's all about getting the lock-in from uh all these different platforms, Gmail and and YouTube and everything. And uh, so, you know, obviously I mean we're

9:43always fans of free market solutions. That's that's really, you know, we the angle that we try to come at it from, but uh, you know, in the EU, uh, where they they've been, you know, maybe more so than in North America, you know, focused on trying to uh, you know, break up this uh, you know, monopoly that that big tech has on uh, on people's attention and on their

10:06software. And so, there was a a lawsuit in 2018 and uh, the EU basically forced Google to implement this search choice screen where you would then uh, have different search engines that you would have to uh, make available. Uh, but when they first launched it, it was a a pay-for-play uh, type model and it was just it was super expensive. It really, you know, didn't make sense uh, for us

10:30or really anybody to participate. The unit economics just didn't justify it. Uh, but uh, there was another round to this this you know, legal action and uh, they forced them to remove the cost. And so, uh, one of our team members, Alex, kind of took the lead on uh, applying and and moving through the process and we got approved in uh, July and then on September 1st it went live.

10:52And so, uh, now anybody who's in Europe basically, when they're installing a new Android uh, device or or updating, uh, they'll have this search choice screen. And and yeah, Presearch is is one of the options. We were I think one of the only ones who made it into every single country cuz they do it on a country-by-country level. So, we got really broad coverage. Yeah, so uh, it's

11:15it's, you know, already been uh, spiking our our our new users. Uh, we, you know, have like five x our new users over the past uh, week since that went live on a daily basis. So, it's yeah, definitely pretty big win. Huge win. Huge win. Great steps towards having a decentralized and fair search engine. And but there you know, as you mentioned Google

11:40is huge and there's still many steps to go. Maybe you can talk about looking forward, you know, what's it going to take for the flippening where you know, Google's losing percentage and decentralized search engines are gaining percentage until the point when it gets above 50%. Yeah, I I I mean it's again they got so much lock-in. I mean they've locked

12:01people in just with Google accounts in general and they've they've integrated Google into so many different devices and software, but I mean ultimately and and we've got a new UI that we're releasing on our testnet on Wednesday of next week and you know, we actually feel like it's it's finally competitive with Google. It's it's you know, really responsive. I

12:27mean the results are are great. Google doesn't have for some reason still dark mode which is you know, weird. That's such a big opportunity, right? So there's definitely you know, UI improvements. I think where they probably their Achilles heel ultimately is you know, the huge revenue driver for that entity is still these really kind of basic you know, Google Ads. They they launched

12:54them in the early 2000s and you know, making over you know, a hundred billion dollars a year in revenue from this product, right? It's crazy. And so they you know, they they've got to protect that because that's what funds all their other stuff. None of their other ventures are really like the cash cow that they get from from AdWords. And so you know, there

13:17hasn't really been a lot of innovation on the UI front. And there's there's I think also we've reached a bit of a a point where like you know, they they're a public reporting company. Everything is based on, you know, revenue and profit. They have to maximize the use of these ad units basically to satisfy their shareholders and fulfill their fiduciary duty. And so, they've stuffed

13:40those pages with as many keywords as they possibly can that are are advertising driven. And so, you know, people at some point like don't find those results as as helpful and it kind of clutters things up. And so, it it's largely about, you know, getting in front of people and and being able to be on the devices that they're they're using. Uh we've launched an an Android app and

14:05uh there's there's also now a home screen widget uh for for Android users. Uh we've got a an iOS app. Uh we're working on uh a desktop browser, but currently we basically just used uh browser extensions to be able to be integrated into Chrome, Brave, uh Firefox. And so, you know, the more that you can kind of get that initial uh trial, basically, and then have a

14:31distribution channel where uh people can use whatever device they're using and and, you know, kind of end up on your your search engine uh is is really kind of the the key. And so, you know, we've got some interesting uh advantages. We've got the ability to incentivize people with tokens. Uh we've got the ability to be flexible with uh the UI. And then, really, I

14:54mean, our our whole model since the beginning has been about how do we leverage big tech against itself? And uh you know, like the the Android search choice thing, I mean, we're we're basically leveraging them against themselves. And so, so to a large degree, they've kind of built these channels that we can now plug into a lot more easily than if you had to build

15:11them from scratch. And so, while sometimes it seems really unrealistic, oh, how are you possibly going to displace this, you know, uh you know, trillion-dollar company, uh I can see a way that it would happen, you know, maybe more quickly than people might think just because, you know, that that those channels are there and if you can plug into them and hit the right

15:31notes, then you can really get rapid adoption. And so, we're we're we're just kind of you know, figuring out all the the intricacies in the model, making sure that the experience is really solid and and leads to really strong user retention. And then as that kind of you know, gets solved, then it's about, you know, how do you push this out in in as wide a way as possible. And

15:56right now we're fortunate because yeah, there's a lot of people looking for private search. There's just, you know, weird stuff coming out, you know, World Economic Forum and these guys saying like, "Oh, maybe we're going to start integrating your search history into your your social credit profile." And like, as stuff like that happens, like you might just get these ping point

16:15moments, right? Where people are like, "Yeah, I'm out." So. Yeah. Yeah, definitely Colin. You know, I've read Life After Google recently and he's a pretty he's a pretty old guy that wrote it, but he had some great predictions in the in the '80s and '90s and he thinks Google will be gone before he is. So, that's that's quite interesting and yeah, we're definitely in a time of

16:40major shifts right now. I I want to you know, we don't have a lot of time left, but I want to take a minute to look forward. You mentioned that you're working on a mainnet. I'm curious about, you know, the updates for the rest of 2021 and what other updates you and your team have in store for major releases for Presearch. Yeah, so so first kind of thing is

17:02we're we're doing the new search UI, which is is like a whole, you know, it's a whole other paradigm as far as the responsiveness and just, you know, how how quickly it loads and just just I think the overall look and feel. So, that's that's coming really soon. We recently started supporting on the testnet nodes Raspberry Pi. So, we're actually working on a hardware device. A

17:29lot of people don't know that yet, but there's going to be a presearch node that's coming out and there's kind of an interesting integration. Again, nobody knows this yet, but with with NFTs as well, which I think is going to be pretty exciting. And after that we've got just kind of some, you know, back of the house stuff. We've totally revamped like

17:49our anti-abuse system to stop people from trying to game the system to earn tokens. We've got to just a much better user experience and more protection for the the project that way. We're implementing a new web3 withdrawal system. And then as we have all those things in place, then yeah, it's about starting to transition the the live traffic. We've currently

18:09got more than a million searches a day. There's 2.3 million registered users and we're we're starting to transition that traffic onto the user nodes. Right now, they're basically running on that same software, but it's it's being hosted centrally across a bunch of nodes that we have at data centers. And so, after that happens, then we're in real go-to-market mode

18:31and then we're also starting to to look more at the keyword staking platform and there's, you know, so many improvements that we can make on like the ad UI side of things and really creating engaging and you know, unobtrusive ads that that people you know, will actually find beneficial. And so, the more value that we can add to the keyword staking system, then you know,

18:57the more value that gets conferred into the ecosystem. So, that's a lot of the focus kind of between now and the end of the year. And then beyond that, yeah, I mean, there's there's more decentralization. I would basically say, you know, implementing more decentralized governance, more uh usage of blockchain in in places where we have currently, you know,

19:18centralized technology. So, yeah, exciting times. Very exciting, Colin. And for the viewers that are looking to learn more about those updates and just start using Presearch right now to help with their privacy, what's the best way for them to learn more and to get involved in the communities? Yeah, so our our Telegram community is kind of our our number one place. It's

19:40t.me/presearch. And if you want to check out the service, it's currently presearch.org. That's That is one of the thing we're flipping to presearch.com in the next couple of months. So, you can check us out there and create an account and start earning pre-tokens when you search. Sounds great, Colin. Thanks so much for taking the time to come on. All the best

20:02with all of these amazing updates with Presearch moving forward. And let's follow up in the near future. Sounds good. Appreciate it, Ashton. Thanks so much.