Google Powered BitTorrent Seach Engines
Written by Ernesto on November 22, 2008Running a BitTorrent site can be quite costly. Most of the larger sites need over a dozen servers to keep everything running smoothly. There are some scalable alternatives for BitTorrent startups though. Two relatively unknown meta-search engines have taken a different route by using Google’s App Engine, which provides optimal scalability, for free.
V0rtex and TorrentTab are two sites using Google’s resources to search for torrents. By using Google’s App Engine, they can run their sites without having to invest a single dime in hardware or bandwidth.
On a free account, users of Google’s App Engine can host 500MB data, and serve up to 5 million page views a month. This is more than enough for a medium sized BitTorrent site. At the moment it is not possible to upgrade these limits, since paid accounts are not yet available, but this might change in the future.
Both sites are totally ad free, and great resources to search for torrents. V0rtex currently searches 12 BitTorrent sites, including established sites such as Mininova, The Pirate Bay and isoHunt. The site itself has a clean look and feel, and the search results are sortable by date, peers, seeds and more.
TorrentFreak spoke with Reda, the developer of the site, who told us that he started the project to learn how to code. “It was really fun and exciting to learn Python and Javascript/Ajax,” he said. His goal is not to compete with the big players though. Reda hasn’t even bothered to register a domain name for it since it was mainly a learning experience.
This is different for the other BitTorrent meta search engine hosted on Google’s App Engine, which does have its own domain. TorrentTab, which is a project of David Sánchez, is also using Google’s architecture to search for torrents. The site currently searches 10 sites, and presents the search results in tabs using Google Ajax Feed API.
David told TorrentFreak that he initially started the site on his own Internet connection. When the site started to attract more visitors, he had to find an alternative. Google’s App Engine seemed to be a great solution, so he recoded the site in Python and moved it over to Google’s infrastructure.
Unlike some of the other meta-search engines that use tabbed search results, TorrentTab is not merely loading the results from the other sites in a frame. Unfortunately there are no sorting options for the search results, which makes it hard to find the best seeded files, or the latest uploads.
Although V0rtex and TorrentTab are are not revolutionary in terms of features or functionality, it is great to see that Google is providing a free playground for BitTorrent startups. It’s always good to see some variety.
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35 Responses
It’d be nice to see something new being done here with this revolutionary move by Google – cloud computing here we come – rather than yet another public bittorrent search engine that searches crap, slow public trackers.
I myself am coding an application – for my own use at this stage – so that I can store my website backups: the beauty of AppEngine is that it’s (claimed to be) instantly and automatically massivley scaleable so when I start uploading backups over 500MB I get more space and what’s more that space is spread over the whole AppEngine potentially – even Google can’t tell what I’m storing even if they wanted to because it’s distributed over the whole storage system.
I was idly thinking I wonder if one could make a sever of sorts and use it as a seedbox – Google literally couldn’t pull the files off. They could throw me off the system but my files would just disappear.
Instead we get it being used for search engines that pull results from 10-12 of the crappiest, slowest and crap laden public trackers in the world. All you public users know what I’m talkig about: you type in say “heroes” and you get 100 results back. Only problem is there’s only 3 differnent labels in there and you must search through experiment with getting what you want.
Private tracker – one copy of each format, no sorting required. Quality, speed and convenience: that’s private trackers for you.
Private trackers are Bs. they moniter you every step of the way and so public is much better and alot of the time faster
YEAAAA! Go on RIAA/MAFIAA motherf*ckers, sue google, I dare ya… double dare ya, heck would even pay to see that show!
But no… you would rather bully the people who cant fight, and you know if you take on google they will crush you like the maggots that you are.
I hope this catches on, next step to try to run a tracker here… till it gets popular then move to a “normal” site.
In closing, good luck TorrentTab and Vortex, f*ck you MAFIAA and thanks Google!
Cheers!
http://www.eZee.se
Last time I checked when I typed in “Heroes”, sure you get 100 results, but the one at the top is the one with the most seeds, and hence the one I want.
Seriously, private trackers do have their merits but public trackers are no where near as bad as people who write huge blocks of tl;dr to insist so say. I usually max out my connection fine, and I’ve never gotten a bad file.
“even Google can’t tell what I’m storing even if they wanted to because it’s distributed over the whole storage system.”
wait what?
The whole storage system, owned and indexed by google… They can tell what you’re storing just fine.
You can’t use it as a seedbox, because Google Apps can’t write to the filesystem…
Its good to now a few serach engines i like mininova and thepiratebay
thanks
<3 Google
c’est mon bro ca !!!!
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4486066
War 08.08.08. The Art of Betrayalâ is one of the first documentary Internet-films. This is the most outspoken film about the war, that started on the day of opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing, the film about the war, in which tens of Russian peacemaker perished as well as hundreds of peaceful Ossetians; it is the film about the war that turned out to be the doping drug for the rating of the republican candidate to the post of the President of the USA John McCain.
The editorial staff of Russia.ru kept an eye on the progress of this war from the very beginning of Georgian invasion in Tskhinval. The camera crew of the TV-channel came into the destroyed republic on the 12th of August for the first time.
This trip resulted in more than 100 footages about the destroyed capital of the South Ossetia, about the burnt villages, dead civilians, about the families left without their houses, about the people, whose relatives are missing.
Russia.ru created a large base of experts, commentators and witnesses of the war crimes of the Georgian army. Finally it was decided to carry out a complete investigation of the events in the Caucasus, and the camera crew of Russia.ru headed by the writer Kirill Benediktov went the the South Ossetia again.
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4486066
“War 08.08.08. The Art of Betrayal” is one of the first documentary Internet-films. This is the most outspoken film about the war, that started on the day of opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing, the film about the war, in which tens of Russian peacemaker perished as well as hundreds of peaceful Ossetians; it is the film about the war that turned out to be the doping drug for the rating of the republican candidate to the post of the President of the USA John McCain.
Tried AppEngine before. Its cool, but it uses Python (considering Guido van Rossum works for Google).
http://www.torrentino.2500mhz.info
Good on you google….
@6 it will be interesting to see how the MAFIAA reacts to this, if they do have the balls to go after google i hope they get smashed.
someone crying about public trackers again(yawns)
Type in aXXo into either site, see how many fake torrents get listed.
PASS!!!!
A very interesting read, I wonder if this might land google in the courts though. My guess is not, as they are to big now.
But it seems quite obvious they knew this ssytem could be used for sharing torrents indexed through this new free system.
http://www.aquariumfish.me
guess i was lucky enough to have had a great experience on private trackers.
UNLUCKY to the joiners of corporate ridden swarms on slow trackers, framed by ads written by haxxors
I like it – great way for new sites to get started for free with the help of the internet’s superpower.
This is a lie.
Google are playing the “friend”
they are the biggest “Privacy” leechers EVER!!
there all about PR!!
while there stealing our info and sending it to VIACOM, so fox knows whos watching illegal copyright videos on youtube (owned by google)
“Search” not “Seach”
Google want to spread their resources in different ways. We can see Google promotion for Chrome or different resources also.
Thanks
http://iphoneandgoogle.edublogs.org/
v0rtex will replace torrent scan for me as the pirate bay are no longer compatible plus they have all the great public trackers included included yarr ahahaahaa
thanks for the help google =]
Dude, Google ROCKS! If Google gets involved, it will ROCK!
jess
http://www.privacy.cz.tc
Hi everyone! I am new to this. How do I play my movies after they r done downloading? All I hear is the sound but no picture.
Reasoned Mind: “Private tracker – one copy of each format, no sorting required. Quality, speed and convenience: that’s private trackers for you.”
Considering that Reasoned Mind is a hired RIAA/MPAA plant, if he’s suggesting private trackers(an amusing 180 from his usual ranting that filesharing is pure evil, I almost choked laughing when he babbled about starting a seedbox), then that, kids, a sign to keep using public trackers.
@ RIOS9922
Google VLC download that it will play any format you throw at it. Hope that helps.
The one that gets closest to Google is http://www.speckly.com
Click on the little binoculars to check out the source torrent quickly without leaving the search results. Saves me a hell of a lot of time.
Gentlemen, the problem with all those ‘Super Torrent Search’ sites is
that they require you to turn on javascript and images in your
browser, entailing a flurry of advertisements and who knows what
poured down your computer’s throat.
However one perhaps can still achieve similar search results with a
URL like
‘http://www.google.com/search?q=”ohio players” “skin tight” site:thepiratebay.org OR site:isohunt.com OR site:www.mininova.org&num=50′
I.e.,
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22ohio+players%22+%22skin+tight%22+site:thepiratebay.org+OR+site:isohunt.com+OR+site:www.mininova.org&num=50
Nice, so now we all have a way to foment illegal activities…
Regards…
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go to http://www.youtittys.com best site ever
Private trackers are Bs. they moniter you every step of the way and so public is much better and alot of the time faster
http://www.demlisohbet.com
Type in aXXo into either site, see how many fake torrents get listed.
http://www.demlisohbet.com
humas polda jambi http://www.polisiana.web.id
I think it is well written article on Google Powered Bit Torrent. I have also used this but not understood properly by me. However, I will try to look into it. By the way it very good.
Thanks
http://iphonetouchscreen.wordpress.com/
The RIAA and MPAA i bet are going crazy right now…..
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