One person. Pure Rust. One year.
Google used to work.
Now it doesn't. I'm Nic Weyand, and a year ago I started building a replacement — because I wanted search that actually finds what you're looking for. First try. Every time.
The Argand Principal
"The user finds EXACTLY what they were looking for.
On the first try. Every time."
This is the non-negotiable constraint every design decision is measured against. Not "good enough." Not "usually." First try. Every time. If a change doesn't serve this, it doesn't ship.
How it works
Simple by design. Deliberately not magic.
You search for anything.
Plain language, technical queries, weird phrasing — Argand doesn't care. No boolean operators required.
Argand ranks by confidence.
Every result gets a confidence score. You see the top ten, ranked highest-confidence first. No ads mixed in. No sponsored result at position one.
Navigate routes you to the answer.
When confidence is high enough, Argand Navigate takes you directly to the relevant passage on the source website and highlights it. Traffic goes to the site — not to us.
How we compare
Every search engine makes different promises.
Here is what each actually does.
| Feature | Bing | Kagi | DDG | Argand | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI-generated overviews | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Never |
| Drives traffic to source sites | No | No | Partial | Yes | Always |
| Builds user profile for ads | Yes | Yes | No | No | Never |
| Business model | Behavioural ads | Behavioural ads | Subscription | Contextual ads | Contextual ads |
| Extractive answers (cite source) | Rarely | Rarely | Partial | No | Always |
| Zero result retention | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Built in pure Rust | — | — | — | — | Yes |
* Argand is in private beta. Values reflect the design intent.
The Argand ecosystem
Search is just the beginning.
One platform. A dozen services. All built on the same foundation: fast, private, lightweight.
Quality-first web search. No AI overviews.
Coming soonPrivacy-first navigation. Anti-surveillance routing.
Coming soonMedia recommendations. Your taste, your data.
Coming soonTrack how news articles change over time.
Coming soonAutomated removal from 200+ data brokers.
Coming soonPrivate form builder. No tracking, no leakage.
Coming soonHyperlocal weather. Minute-by-minute forecasts.
Coming soonAcademic search. Open access finder.
Coming soonGoogle Alerts replacement. No surveillance.
Coming soonLegal research without being tracked.
Coming soonPrivacy-first web archival.
Coming soonVideo conferencing. E2E encrypted. No account required.
Coming soonPrivacy isn't our pitch.
It's our floor.
We lead with quality results, not privacy theatre. The foundations are solid by default — not a feature you opt into.
Zero Retention
Anonymous searches are gone when the request ends. We don't log queries. We don't know who you are.
You Own Your Identity
Accounts use DIDs and Solid Pods. Your data lives on your device or your Pod — not on our servers.
Contextual Ads Only
We don't know who you are, so we can't target you. Ads are relevant to what you searched — nothing more.
Who's building this
I've been a software engineer for years. I watched Google go from the best tool on the internet to something that actively fights you for your attention. AI overviews that answer your question so you never visit the source. Ads disguised as organic results. A ranking system optimised for engagement, not relevance.
A year ago I started Argand — alone, in pure Rust, evenings and weekends. The goal is simple: you search for something and you get it. First try. Every time.
Argand has no venture capital and isn't seeking any. VC money comes with return expectations that eventually force every product to compromise. I'd rather build something sustainable and genuinely good. Revenue comes from contextual advertising and developer APIs — incentives that align with making the product better, not selling your attention.
I believe software should serve people — not the other way around. Against monopoly, for the public good, built to last.
The corpus is limited right now. The engine is real. Tell me what you want from it →
Get early access.
No spam. We'll email you when Argand is ready for the public — and when major new services go live.