The open-source metasearch engine created by Adam Tauber is Searx.
Tauber, who also used the handle “asciimoo,” released Searx in January 2014. Unlike a conventional search engine that maintains one large independent index, Searx sends queries to multiple search services and combines their results. It was designed around privacy: it does not pass users’ IP addresses or search histories to the engines it consults, and it blocks tracking cookies used for profiling.
Searx was released under the GNU Affero General Public License and could be run either through public instances or on a user’s own server. That self-hosting option made it popular with people who wanted more control over search infrastructure and settings.
A common mix-up is SearXNG. SearXNG is a fork created by contributors in 2021 after development of the original Searx project slowed. The names are closely related, but the quiz answer refers to Tauber’s original project, not its successor.