Search and discovery on the Internet should be open, decentralized and democratic. That is why NGI Zero Discovery funds technology projects that make political news and debate accessible, expose trackers in your search results and help you discover and organize local events and meetups.
Search and discovery for many users is like the keyhole of the Internet. You type in what you want to know and receive a list of results. But who holds the key and decides which doors are opened and remain closed? Technology as important as the Internet and the world wide web should be transparent, democratic and neutral.
The Next Generation Internet is an initiative of the European Commission to create an open, trustworthy and reliable internet for all. Decentralized and democratic search is an important element, which is why the NGI Zero Discovery open call funds research and development to improve open search and discovery.
Open source and accessible
NGI Zero Discovery is an unique funding scheme organized by the NLnet Foundation for technology projects that improve online search and discovery. The entire yield of supported projects will become available as open source, open hardware and open standards. Another unique trait is that all projects are accessible to people with visual or other disabilities. Between now and 2021 NLnet and NGI Zero will award 5.6 million euro in small to medium-sized R&D grants. The sixth call of NGI Zero Discovery opened up on October 1st 2019 with a deadline for submission of December 1st.
Follow political news, deep educational search and discovering local meetups
So how can we actually improve online search and discovery? What projects does NGI Zero Discovery select and support? Read below which technologies and ideas are selected in the latest open NGI Zero Discovery call and why these solutions matter for end users. And check the NLnet website to learn more about all the promising NGI Zero Discovery projects that together create free and fair search and discovery.
PoliFLW EU
Make political news and online debate accessible
searx
Federating self-hosted search hubs
A Distributed Software Stack for Co-operation
Facilitating easy ad hoc cooperation
Variation Graph
Privacy enhanced search within e.g. genome data sets
Extending PeerTube
Adding advanced search capabailities to PeerTube
Explain
Deep search on open educational resources
WebXray Discovery
Expose tracking mechanism in search hubs
Openki.net
Make local events and meetups discoverable