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Kim Dotcom’s MEGA File-Sharing Network Adds Pirate-Friendly Search Engine

Kim Dotcom MEGA search engine

MEGA? More like Megaupload.

Kim Dotcom’s new file-sharing service now has a search engine, Wired reports. The addition brings MEGA closer to the hilariously narcissistic digital entrepreneur’s previous file-sharing service, Megaupload, which was dramatically shut down by the authorities a little more than a year ago. (See Down By Law: The Year Downloading Took a Dive.)

The mega-search.me search engine doesn’t yield many results just yet for illicit music-seekers. That’s probably because, rather than crawl MEGA’s services like a traditional search engine, MEGA’s search functionality depends on users volunteering links to files stashed on the service. Once users have located a file, though, downloads are reportedly way quicker than on rival file-sharing service BitTorrent.

As Wired notes, this new search option makes MEGA pirate-ier, and not in that swashbuckling, Keith Richards-and-Tom-Waits-cover-“Shenandoah” way. Unsurprisingly, Dotcom’s attorney is quoted as saying “no” when asked if his client was in any way involved with mega-search.me.

How many people use MEGA is uncertain. Dotcom claimed more than one million users after the service’s first day, earlier this month. Megaupload had roughly 150 million registered users at its peak.

As of press time, the search engine turns up only one hit for “Beastie Boys,” so we hope you pirates like “Intergalactic” better than anything else they ever did. Yo ho ho and a vocoder.