findnix.eu: A GDPR-Compliant Search Engine Built From Scratch

Mirko Stahnke — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 23:23:57 +0000

Introduction

Every major search engine today runs on the same trade: you get results, they get your data. findnix.eu is an attempt to break that trade — a search engine built in the EU, for the EU, that doesn't track you, doesn't build a profile of you, and doesn't sell what it doesn't collect in the first place.

This isn't a pitch deck. It's a working search engine, built and run by one person, and this post is a quick tour of what it actually does.

What you can search

findnix.eu isn't just web search. Over time it's grown into a set of focused search verticals, each with its own index:

Web — general search, combining multiple sources with a preference for sites that submit their own sitemap (a small way to give independent sites a fairer shot than they'd get elsewhere)
News — pulled directly from public-broadcaster media libraries across the EU (ARD, ZDF, Arte, ORF, SRF and more), with a built-in video player — no detour through the broadcaster's own site
Podcasts — full show and episode search via the Podcast Index API, with direct in-browser playback
Images & Videos — licensed, freely usable media
Science — open-access papers via OpenAIRE and BASE
Firmen (Companies) — a growing local business index
Kultur — European cultural heritage via Europeana

There's also a companion site, kids.findnix.eu, built specifically for child-safe search — same philosophy, different audience.

No tracking, stated plainly

No tracking cookies, no IP logging, no cross-session profiling. Search history lives in your browser's local storage only, never on the server. Ads (yes, there are ads — servers cost money) are flat-rate and clearly labeled, not auction-based, and capped at 3 per page.

What's newest

The latest addition is a small marketplace feature: a domain valuation and sale tool. You get a free (unbinding, heuristic) valuation of a domain based on TLD, length, and structure, and can list it for sale for a small amount of points — findnix's internal currency, earned through site activity. Inquiries land in an in-app inbox rather than exposing your email address publicly.

Why build this

Mostly because the alternative — accepting that "free" search always means being the product — never sat right. findnix.eu won't out-scale Google. It doesn't try to. It's trying to be a genuinely different deal: you search, we don't remember, and the site stays funded through ads you can actually see and understand, not ones built on a profile of you.