Original LibGen was still the best browsing experience and it's been down for months. If we lose this resource it would be truly a setback and grave loss.
If I go to a particular Sci-Hub mirror and it's down, I often go to the Wiki page to see the different TLD options. Same for checking some of my favorite Torrent trackers. I don't use Google for any controversial searches anymore, but if Wiki continues to degrade in quality, I'll really be SOL.
I'd wager few people would use Google to search content on Sci-Hub. The normal usage is simply entering the DOI of the paper you want on Sci-Hub's front page.
Note: you can still search for Sci-Hub itself on Google, and find plenty of pages listing active mirrors.
They could censor that in Chrome as well, in multiple ways. That's one reason why having your DNS services provider, browser provider and search provider as the same entity is an extra risk.
This changes absolutely nothing about how I use sci-hub. As long as I can find the front page and search for a DOI, I don't care how many search results Google censors.
I really like yep.com, as per https://www.searchenginemap.com/ it's one of only four search engines that run their own web crawlers. Results are slow but incredibly high-quality.
You are recommending a search engine that is operating from Russia under one of the most oppressive regimes in the world. The Russian state monitors usage and is definitely censoring all sorts of stuff on it.
Of course Sci Hub was developed by a Russian, which is probably why Yandex is not censoring it. Also, I don't think the Russian government cares much for intellectual property rights of companies in NATO countries, for obvious reasons. But they are definitely censoring a wide range of other topics.
You don't have to go too far to see such similar censorship in action. It's not just "them over there". Hacker News conducts stealth censorship, shadow banning, and manipulations of all kinds to push artificial narratives, etc...
Its about unchecked corruption, abuse, and the misuse of power. It's a mistake to believe such things are only done by "them" in a different country.
If I was looking for something that is against the interests of Russian oligarchs I wouldn't use yandex.
In the same way it has become obvious that you should not use Google if you are looking for something that is against the interests of American oligarchs.
On this one particular issue. There are certainly things blocked by Russian search engines which have to comply with a rather lengthy list of banned sites since about 2012.
If by more open you mean not easily censored by anybody but Putin. But it's hard to imagine that it's actually more open by any reasonable definition of that word.
How come there's no decentralized anonymous global library? Like some kind of onion routed, p2p file sharing website? Something like tor + ipfs + storj.
The technology is already there, isn't it?
I know plenty of people who would gladly "sudo docker compose up" something that would route some data between peers like in tor and donate a few tens of Go like in storj.
Readit News
Anna's archive & Z-lib has mirrored all of Sci-hub and are indeed a viable alternative.
https://github.com/rumca-js/Internet-Places-Database
You can still Google Sci-Hub, and find plenty of pages listing active mirrors.
Notably, https://www.sci-hub.pub is the top hit for me, and is reliable enough.
I'd wager few people would use Google to search content on Sci-Hub. The normal usage is simply entering the DOI of the paper you want on Sci-Hub's front page.
Note: you can still search for Sci-Hub itself on Google, and find plenty of pages listing active mirrors.
https://yandex.com/search/?text=sci-hub
Of course Sci Hub was developed by a Russian, which is probably why Yandex is not censoring it. Also, I don't think the Russian government cares much for intellectual property rights of companies in NATO countries, for obvious reasons. But they are definitely censoring a wide range of other topics.
Check this reports for some details on the types of things that Yandex censors: https://www.hrw.org/report/2025/07/30/disrupted-throttled-an...
Its about unchecked corruption, abuse, and the misuse of power. It's a mistake to believe such things are only done by "them" in a different country.
In the same way it has become obvious that you should not use Google if you are looking for something that is against the interests of American oligarchs.
Russia is an oppressive and dangerous regime, sure, but in 2025, there's nothing particularly special about it on human rights and censorship.
In the context of Western censorship of a global resource, Yandex makes a load of sense.
https://ft.com/content/8a71052d-d26d-4d71-95d8-c8886ca4fdea
It's crazy that you think there's only one search engine in the US.
Try this one: https://www.bing.com/search?q=sci-hub
..and of those, I really wouldn't be giving the one under the direct control of Russia's FSB as my top recommendation.
A little-known American search engine known as Bing[1] lists Sci-Hub just fine though.
[1] https://www.bing.com/search?q=sci-hub
The technology is already there, isn't it?
I know plenty of people who would gladly "sudo docker compose up" something that would route some data between peers like in tor and donate a few tens of Go like in storj.
The demand is absolutely there.