After KickAss Torrents (KAT), Torrentz.eu has now been shut down. The mega torrents search engine has mysteriously announced “farewell” to its millions of users. Torrentz.eu hosted no torrents of its own, but only linked to other sites hosting torrents such as The Pirate Bay. In what seems like an end to the golden era of the torrent search engine, it’s unlikely torrentz.eu will be back.
Ever since it was founded in 2003, Torrentz.eu has been the most favorite search engine for the torrent community for over 13 years straight. The reason for shutting down torrentz.eu remains unknown. It has been about sixteen days since the arrest of Artem Vaulin by the US Department of Justice. In what came as a shocker to the online community, the chief was arrested in Poland and is wanted by the United States for copyright infringement, money laundering, and other charges. Soon after his arrest, Vaulin hired Kim Dotcom’s lawyer Ira Rothken to fight alleged criminal copyright charges filed against him. While the online torrent community is yet to come to terms with the shutdown of KickAss Torrents, the mysterious shutdown of Torrentz.eu has added to the disappointment.
Just a few hours ago, without any warning, torrentz.eu disabled search functionality. When you visit www.torrentz.eu, all you see is this –
The website says – “Torrentz was a free, fast and powerful meta-search engine combining results from dozens of search engines.” The page looks normal, but if you start looking for links, you won’t find any. The fact that torrentz now refers to itself in the “past” sense is an obvious indicator that the era has now come to an end.
Whether the arrest of KickAss Torrents owner and the subsequent shutdown of Kickass Torrents website led to the shutdown of torrentz.eu remains unknown. At this point in time, all we know is that the site is not responding to search. If you try to login, you see this message – “Torrentz will always love you. Farewell.”
The torrent community has now lost two of the largest torrent sites in just three weeks. When torrentz first made its presence, it used to host torrent sites, but later switched to meta-engine search and went to become the largest torrent search engine. It remains to be seen when a similar search engine will make its presence.
We will keep a watch on this news as it develops.