Presearch, a heightened privacy search engine that rewards users with tokens, has gained a notable step up in the competitive world of search. Presearch is now integrated with Android in Europe as a default search engine option.
According to a statement by Presearch, Android devices across the UK and European Economic Area (EEA) will now be given the option to select their search platform. This will expose Presearch to hundreds of millions of devices. Presearch states that nearly 70% of smartphone owners in Europe use Android’s operating system.
Colin Pape, Founder of Presearch, said that with Android running on around 4/5s of the world’s smartphones, this is a huge win for “taking decentralized services and blockchain mainstream and driving mass adoption.”
“With potentially hundreds of millions of users just a click away on the Search Choice screen, this continues to be one of the biggest wins for any project within the crypto space and a huge opportunity to gain exposure for Presearch’s private, decentralized search experience.”
Google did not necessarily make the decision out of pure benevolence. In 2018, Google was penalized by the European Commission for its search dominance and fined €4.24 billion. The company was required to make changes to its Android platform to allow more choice for its users and not just a default Google selection.
Presearch states that as a result of these changes, the five most popular eligible search engines (including Google) in each included European country will now be displayed in random order at the top of the Android Choice Screen, followed by up to seven additional search engines at the bottom. While the Presearch option may be shuffled depending on the country, regardless of location, a European user may select Presearch as their main search service.
Regardless of Google/Android, anyone can use Presearch on their desktop or smartphone via Google Play or the App Store.
As consumers wise up to the intrusive nature of certain digital products (where you are the product), privacy-focused platforms are gaining traction around the world. Presearch reports over 4 million registered users and 4 million searches per day.
In the past year, Presearch has grown from 40 million monthly searches to a peak of over 150 million monthly searches. Still, a long way to go to catch up with Google, but heading in the right direction.
Presearch explains that it is backed by a global network of community supporters and node operators that power its decentralized search engine. Presearch Nodes are used to process user search requests, and node operators earn rewards through Ethereum-based PRE tokens for joining and supporting the network. Presearch’s search engine is currently powered by more than 73,000 decentralized nodes run by supporters in over 100 countries across the globe.
Presearch also operates its own advertising platform that uses Keyword Staking, which allows advertisers to stake PRE tokens to a specific word or term.
The advertiser that stakes the most tokens to a given keyword has its ad show up when someone searches that term. Advertisers still maintain ownership of their PRE tokens while they are staked, so there’s no cost per click or impression.