{"slug": "4get", "name": "4get", "category": "search", "category_name": "Search", "description": "", "recommenders": 4, "commenters": 6, "warners": 0, "score": 3.96, "rising": 0.02, "first": "2025-11-07", "latest": "2026-08-19", "why": "I would recommend adapting the source code of 4get.ca", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 4, "neutral": 1, "compare": 1, "warn": 0}, "spark": [1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "I would recommend adapting the source code of 4get.ca", "kind": "", "icon": false, "domain": "4get.ca", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://4get.ca", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["4get"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 789790256, "item_id": 49361891, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49361891", "by": "alisadev", "date": "2026-08-19", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It has all the search engines combined in one", "excerpt": "Try https://4get.ca/ It has all the search engines combined in one (you can simply switch between them and see all available results).", "context": "", "use_case": "combined search engines", "switched_from": "", "story": "Firefox for iOS now has a native adblocker"}, {"id": 771690161, "item_id": 48230635, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48230635", "by": "nox21125", "date": "2026-05-21", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've taken a look at 4get.ca, which is Canadian apparently (I am too), it's really good.", "excerpt": "Thanks! I really appreciate the detailed feedback and suggestions. The idea of supplementing the index with older Common Crawl/Blekko-era data is definitely interesting, especially for preserving pages that are gone now. The metasearch + independent reranking concept is interesting too, but one of the main goals with Slick is staying completely independent long term. I know that comes with much slower growth and a lo", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: My independent search engine focused on user control"}, {"id": 771631840, "item_id": 48226990, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48226990", "by": "n1xis10t", "date": "2026-05-21", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I would recommend adapting the source code of 4get.ca", "excerpt": "Very cool, I subscribed to the newsletter. I\u2019ve experimented with retrieval and ranking across a sample of a million pages from the early days of the Common Crawl (around 2014) and I was surprised by how many of them seemed high quality. The CTO of CC tells me it\u2019s because most of the early URLs were donated by Blekko, which was an old search engine that he used to work for. I don\u2019t know what the quality of recent CC", "context": "", "use_case": "Metasearch scrapers", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: My independent search engine focused on user control"}, {"id": 735232352, "item_id": 45952022, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45952022", "by": "19l21", "date": "2025-11-17", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use the '4get' proxy search engine", "excerpt": "I use the '4get' proxy search engine, which lets you use pretty much every search engine under the sun, for both websites and images. It's really useful because it is faster than google, and if you need to find some pages you can just change the search engine quickly. It is open source and there are many instances available, I use '4get.bloat.cat' or '4get.lunar.iu' It is a better alternative to SearX for sure", "context": "", "use_case": "Metasearch", "switched_from": "", "story": "Building a Simple Search Engine That Works"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["combined search engines", "metasearch scrapers", "metasearch", "web search"], "compared": [{"slug": "searxng", "name": "SearXNG", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48225919", "title": "Show HN: My independent search engine focused on user control", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45854058", "title": "item 45854058", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49319633", "title": "Firefox for iOS now has a native adblocker", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45950720", "title": "Building a Simple Search Engine That Works", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"neutral": 1, "compare": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {"recommend": 2}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {}}, "versions": [], "version_unnamed": 0, "family_ref": null, "runs_on": null, "lines": [], "quotes": [{"id": 789790256, "item_id": 49361891, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49361891", "by": "alisadev", "date": "2026-08-19", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It has all the search engines combined in one", "excerpt": "Try https://4get.ca/ It has all the search engines combined in one (you can simply switch between them and see all available results).", "context": "", "use_case": "combined search engines", "switched_from": "", "story": "Firefox for iOS now has a native adblocker"}, {"id": 771690161, "item_id": 48230635, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48230635", "by": "nox21125", "date": "2026-05-21", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've taken a look at 4get.ca, which is Canadian apparently (I am too), it's really good.", "excerpt": "Thanks! I really appreciate the detailed feedback and suggestions. The idea of supplementing the index with older Common Crawl/Blekko-era data is definitely interesting, especially for preserving pages that are gone now. The metasearch + independent reranking concept is interesting too, but one of the main goals with Slick is staying completely independent long term. I know that comes with much slower growth and a lo", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: My independent search engine focused on user control"}, {"id": 771631840, "item_id": 48226990, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48226990", "by": "n1xis10t", "date": "2026-05-21", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I would recommend adapting the source code of 4get.ca", "excerpt": "Very cool, I subscribed to the newsletter. I\u2019ve experimented with retrieval and ranking across a sample of a million pages from the early days of the Common Crawl (around 2014) and I was surprised by how many of them seemed high quality. The CTO of CC tells me it\u2019s because most of the early URLs were donated by Blekko, which was an old search engine that he used to work for. I don\u2019t know what the quality of recent CC", "context": "", "use_case": "Metasearch scrapers", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: My independent search engine focused on user control"}, {"id": 735232352, "item_id": 45952022, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45952022", "by": "19l21", "date": "2025-11-17", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use the '4get' proxy search engine", "excerpt": "I use the '4get' proxy search engine, which lets you use pretty much every search engine under the sun, for both websites and images. It's really useful because it is faster than google, and if you need to find some pages you can just change the search engine quickly. It is open source and there are many instances available, I use '4get.bloat.cat' or '4get.lunar.iu' It is a better alternative to SearX for sure", "context": "", "use_case": "Metasearch", "switched_from": "", "story": "Building a Simple Search Engine That Works"}, {"id": 733807040, "item_id": 45862940, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45862940", "by": "1vuio0pswjnm7", "date": "2025-11-08", "version": null, "stance": "compare", "quote": "4get.ca is just another \"metasearch engine\" that anyone can \"self-host\"", "excerpt": "4get.ca is just another \"metasearch engine\" that anyone can \"self-host\", like https://searx.github.io/searx/ for example There is no reason one has to use any particular remote instance https://web.archive.org/web/20250801194307if_/https://git.lolcat.ca/lolcat/4get/archive/master.zip Nor does one have to use a browser in order do \"metasearch\". For example, I have a script that queries over 60 search engines directly,", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": null}, {"id": 733671136, "item_id": 45854446, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45854446", "by": "ericpruitt", "date": "2025-11-07", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "They've got them listed under an open index on https://4get.ca/banner/", "excerpt": "Just a warning that some of the search header images are NSFW. After seeing that they were randomized, I starting going through them and got a dildo for one. EDIT: They've got them listed under an open index on https://4get.ca/banner/ if you want to see them all.", "context": "", "use_case": "Web search", "switched_from": "", "story": null}]}