BTJunkie, a popular BitTorrent search engine, has voluntarily shut down after seven years in existence – the recent seizures of Megaupload and several hundred other broadcasting websites likely had a significant impact over the move to voluntarily shut down. It’s yet to be seen if BTJunkie will go completely inactive or whether they will follow in the footsteps of The Pirate Bay, which ended its search service in 2009 but still allows for the trading of content through decentralized methods such as magnet link sharing.
The site was an advanced BitTorrent search engine operating between 2005 and 2012. It used a web crawler (something similar to search engine Google) to search for torrent files from other torrent sites and store it in its database. It had nearly 4,000,000 active torrents and about 4,200 torrents added daily (compared to runner-up Torrent Portal with 1,500), making it the largest torrent site indexer on the web.
Accel Partners VC Max Niederhofer tweeted that the shutdown of BTjunkie follows other abrupt decisions made by the likes of QuickSilverScreen (closed) and FileSonic (file sharing functionality terminated).
In a goodbye message, BTjunkie writes, “This is the end of the line my friends. The decision does not come easy, but we’ve decided to voluntarily shut down. We’ve been fighting for years for your right to communicate, but it’s time to move on. It’s been an experience of a lifetime; we wish you all the best!”
