IRC has largely been neglected by the search industry (aside from P2P indexers like packetnews and isohunt) and even commercialization in general, so my interest was definitely piqued when I saw a post on TechCrunch about "the most comprehensive IRC search engine."  Israeli-based IRSeek both indexes and archives channel logs from popular servers such as EFnet, DALnet, and #barcampsd’s home of Freenode.

I think IRSeek is a wonderful service to bring to the neglected niche of IRC, but the concept does raise concerns from IRC users who assume a certain contract of privacy.  How can a user tell if a channel is being indexed by IRSeek?  How are channels chosen to be included in the index?  What is the procedure to have content removed from the database?  I want to see the service succeed, but so far it sounds like they’re committing a major faux pas by starting out on a Wild West grab for content without respecting existing user expectations.

I guarantee I will post on this topic again once I’ve learned more about the methods and policies IRSeek employs.