The blog of Mojeek, an independent search engine, on search independence, surveillance advertising, fair use, and internet freedom.
Commenters see Mojeek as an improving independent search option, citing its Focus feature. One disputes its claim that search can be unbiased.
I've just seen your article[1] about business model. Do you think ads will be more sustainable than a subscription-based model? Since a lot of people that will use your search engine know how a computer works (i.e., they know something other than Google), it's fair to assume most of them will have an ad-blocker. Furthermore, ads are counter-productive for a service where you want to have the best result as fast as possible; people won't be looking at ads, or ads will be so intrusive the service will decline in quality (see Google). Did you do some research since the article?
From what I've heard, the UK is pretty big on surveillance. How do the laws impact the "non-tracking" part of the service?
[1]: https://blog.mojeek.com/2020/12/frequently-asked-questions-about-mojeek-business-model-surveillance-privacy.html
In their article “Independent and Unbiased Search Results” I believe Mojeek fundamentally misunderstands the goal of a search engine. There is no such thing as an unbiased search engine. The entire purpose of a search engine is to be biased towards relevance. The opposite of biased isn’t fair, it is random.
If you search for “cars” what should the engine show you? There are likely billions of pages containing the word. (And for some queries, the correct page won’t even contain an exact string match.) If you want to create a useful ranking, your first few results need to have identified the correct intent but also be sensitive to timeliness and location.
https://blog.mojeek.com/2018/08/independent-and-unbiased-search-results.html
Mojeek Focus does this, up to 25 sites (optionally incl subdomains) and 25 exclusions. No signin/signup required.
https://blog.mojeek.com/2022/08/mojeek-focus-search-the-web-you-want.html
As most of the search alternatives rely on G/Bing in one form or another, there's not many in the position to offer this kind of customisation using an independent index. Disclaimer, I am an employee at Mojeek.
> LLMs break the social contract of the internet
The legal concept of fair usage has and is being challenged, and will best tested in court. Is the Golden Age of Fair Use Over? Maybe [0].
[0] https://blog.mojeek.com/2024/05/is-the-golden-age-of-fair-use-over.html
Kagi is nice.
Mojeek is getting better, they have opened up Focus [1][2] which allows for some tweaking.
Searx or Searxng?
[1] https://www.mojeek.com/focus/
[2] https://blog.mojeek.com/2022/08/mojeek-focus-search-the-web-you-want.html
Your browser can also do the universal search bar: https://blog.mojeek.com/2020/11/popping-your-filter-bubble-with-search.html