Scroogle.org closed today on Go Daddy Auctions at $17,100. The site and its owner Daniel Brandt had not seen eye to eye with the search engine giant. He closed the site in 2012 due to Google throttling the site and ddos attacks. The site had a lot of press back in the day. It will be interesting to see who bought the domain.
Tech Republic covered the site back in 2011 with the headline, “Scroogle: Adding privacy to Google Search”
Michael Kassner did a very thorough article on the site.
From the article:
Over the years, I’ve witnessed–from a safe distance–highly-charged debates about search behemoths like Google. The topic most often discussed is whether or not they retain too much Personally Identifiable Information (PII) for too long. Valuable lessons surfaced from those frank discussions, many important enough for me to write about.
Scroogle, what is it?
Now I had to find out about Scroogle. First thing that caught my eye:
“Every day Scroogle crumbles 350,000 cookies and blocks a million ads.”
Next thing I noticed, Scroogle does not:
- Pass cookies on.
- Keep search-term records.
- Retain access logs for more than 48 hours.
The website calls Scroogle a scraper.
Read the full article here
In 2012 Scroogle closed up shop and Barry Schwartz covered it on Search Engine Journal.
From the article:
The owner, Daniel Brandt, said he took it down “forever.” He blames both Google and DDOS attack by someone or a group of people who had a personal vendetta with him. He said even if the DDOS attack did not happen, Scroogle would only have lasted an additional 6 months due to Google’s throttling and squeezing of the service.
Daniel told BetaBeat.com:
Scroogle.org is gone forever. Even if all my DDoS problems had never started in December, Scroogle was already getting squeezed from Google’s throttling, and was already dying. It might have lasted another six months if I hadn’t lost seven servers from DDoS, but that’s about all.He explained:
I no longer have any domains online. I also took all my domains out of DNS because I want to signal to the criminal element that I have no more servers to trash. This hopefully will ward off further attacks on my previous providers.I am a bit surprised the service is offline, it has been available since 2003 and has been through tough times with both Google and attacks.
Read the full article here
Taking a look at Majestic SEO the site has a vibrant link profile.
Interesting. Honestly, I hadn’t heard of that site before reading this. I figured Scroogle.org was just a variation of Microsoft’s Scroogled.com website — something a domainer had thought to sell to Microsoft and given up on.
It’s possible that the bidders in this auction were Google versus Microsoft. At best, we’ll learn only who the winner was. So even if this auction was a “Clash of the Titans”, due to bidder anonymity that possibility can never be confirmed.