4get is a metasearch engine that gets results from other engines, and strips away all of the tracking parameters.
One feature I use a lot is the ability to select which search engine you want to scrape from easily, so I can quickly toggle between results from Google and than duckduckgo, bing, etc. You get wildly different results.
There are dozens of people who host servers for the public to use, although you can self host. The creator of 4get hosts an instance here https://4get.ca/. I host an instance here https://4get.lurx.net/ (Server in Cali) and you can find dozens of other servers and the country they are hosted in https://4get.ca/instances
I get a new banner every time I reload so it might be unrelated to the project.
But it’s been a thing with a lot of open source software the last years to have weird anime and hentai bullshit¹ in them and asking the developers to to think twice renders a wall of horny geeks calling names.
Edit: ¹as in sexually suggestive and unacceptable in a professional setting, and that most people outside the bubble find inappropriate or disturbing or even offensive
All these servers are self hosted, and every server admin can set any image banner they want. The instance I host has two simple banners I like that aren’t anime https://4get.lurx.net/
I agree with your analysis on open source software though