The Register: An Open Source Google--Without the Ads

"With the hope of returning at least one corner of the web to its non-commercial roots, Google watcher Daniel Brandt, who curates the NameBase archive, has released the source code to a Google scraper. Brandt has been making an ad-free proxy available for two years using Google's little known minimal 'ie' interface. By using this proxy, users bypass both Google's notorious '2038' cookie (that's when it expires) and the text ads.

"Brandt fully expects Google to throw legal and technical resources at him, but says he welcomes the challenge if only to clarify copyright issues. Google took people's free stuff and made a $50 billion business from it, he argues..."

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