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About Ask.Moe

I’m not sure what the future holds, but I love the domain name, and I would love to build an alternative to Google, so I hope to find someone who can help make this a reality.

If you’re interested in teaming up with a senior software engineer, then reach out to me at [email protected].

History

Privacy-focused mission using Microsoft’s Bing

I originally started working on Ask.Moe in January, 2020, when I discovered the domain name was available as I have always wanted to build a search engine. The original vision was to build a non-profit, free and open source, privacy-focused search engine using Microsoft Bing’s API. After building the website I discovered obtaining access to ads was extremely difficult, so I never bothered to promote the website since I knew if it became popular then I would quickly go bankrupt.

After many failed attempts at trying to find ways to offset the cost of Bing’s API I decided to jump ship and switch to Google’s Custom Search Engine. As Ask.Moe was a non-profit, I applied to Google as a non-profit organization, which was approved. This meant that I would be able to (1) use Google’s Custom Search Engine for free, and (2) wouldn’t need to display any ads in our search results. However, Google’s Custom Search Engine runs client-side, which means that by using that instead of a Bing proxy, I would have no way of protecting people’s privacy. So I changed mission to instead maximize profits and donate all profits to other non-profit organizations and charities.

It took a while to have our AdSense approved, but when it finally happened then I could see that the idea was extremely profitable. In July 2022 we made 86DKK, August 115DKK, September 324DKK (just shy of the 600DKK threashold for payouts), and in October we had made over 2000DKK before Google, on October 24, out-of-nowhere decided to not only disable the AdSense account, but also ban the Custom Search Engine account, which meant that the website was unable to dispaly any search results at all. To this day Google still hasn’t informed me why they shut down the accounts. If they felt the website was providing invalid ad traffic then they could just disable ads from the search results, but they went out of their way to ban our service even though the website displayed all the Google branding as required, we never clicked ads on our own website, and explicitly told users that “you should only click on the ads that you are geniunely interested in”.

Pivot from Search to Chatbots

After Google shut down the Custom Search Engine account, I moved back to Bing since a lot of people had already set Ask.Moe as their default search engine. However, Microsoft then announced that their already incredibly expensive API would increase from $7/1000 searches to $25/1000 searches. During this time OpenAI had just released their new GPT models which took the world by storm. I decided to setup a quick third-party client which used my own API token, but the rate limits of 3 requests/minute made it impossible to create a good user experience. I then decided to host Chatbot UI’s code instead while Ask.Moe went on hold. Those that were using it can still find it at chat.ask.moe.

I decided to spend a weekend rebuilding a trimmed version of the site with a new tech stack. The goal was to achieve a perfect lighthouse score, deliver fast search results, and provide a beautiful UI.

I don’t plan to promote the site since I don’t have the financial means to support the API costs if the site become popular, but I hope it can help me find a good partner to build something great with.. whether it’s Ask.Moe or something else.

If you are looking for a co-founder, or if you would like to invest, then reach out to me at [email protected].

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