I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing. From what I understand "index" is just a copy of the database of sites. There is little to no value in simply h

I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing. From what I understand "index" is just a copy of the database of sites. There is little to no value in simply having that index. The index is near useless. Yeah, the more I read your post, the more I don't think you understand the point of the idea. The idea would be that many people could contribute to indexing the web, faster, and sharing that in a decentralized fashion. With open access to that index, anyone is able to innovate on that data and build their own search engine. Having fewer crawlers would be a good thing and would indeed decrease the number of hits to your website. More importantly, the work of those crawlers could be distributed and thus page updates could happen even faster. Even if you're right, that some how the indices themselves can be tuned and can be search-engine specific, who cares? That doesn't preclude or prevent an open index from existing. BTW, I didn't really downvote anyone, nor did I have a problem with your comment. I just didn't understand it, and it was hot on the tails of another indecipherable comment. I think I understand your point now, but I feel we're either talking about two different things or thinking about them in vastly different manners.