Torrentz.eu, the world’s largest torrent meta-search engine, has suddenly closed down. The site was founded in 2003, and offered links to torrents indexed on sites such as The Pirate Bay, KickassTorrents, which was recently seized by the US Government, and a plethora of popular BitTorrent sites.
“Torrentz was a free, fast and powerful meta-search engine combining results from dozens of search engines,” the site’s front page now reads. Attempts to log-in yield the following message: “Torrentz will always love you. Farewell.”
The death of Torrentz, though, is unlikely to make a dent in torrent traffic. Already, reddit users have begun collating potential replacements.
“The next site will pop up pretty quickly,” Dan Deeth, a spokesperson for Sandvine, a network equipment company that tracks BitTorrent traffic, told Wired. “The technical sophistication of someone who uses BitTorrent in modern times usually surpasses the ability to find [torrents] by other means.”
“There isn’t a big traffic swing when sites like that go down. It’s not really a factor,” he added.
Flippy, the operator of Torrentz, has declined to speak about the closure of the search engine – both TorrentFreak and Wired both reached out – though the move is not thought to be due to legal reasons.
