Link: It’s The Information, Stupid | Mojeek Blog

Search engines can influence an election.

Actually the influence of search engines on elections has been commented on since the early 2000s. Books may have been written, and yet little academic research seems to have been done. It may seem remarkable, unless you think about it.

@bradenslen Important! Do you use Mojeek? I tried it when it was in its early stages, but maybe should give it another look. I'm using Kagi now. Where does Mojeek make its money?

@JohnBrady Mojeek is my daily driver. They keep expanding their index and refining their algo and they are pretty good for general queries. Highly technical stuff still needs Google. I like Mojeek for their privacy and they are not controlled by big tech. Right now they make their money selling their API to other search services. For instance, Kagi's general search is a metasearch blend of Brave search, Yandex and Mojeek.

@odd Back when I was a Mac user, I never had a problem with Safari, but I did have a problem with Apple's walled garden and not being allowed to add any search engine I wanted really bothered me. That walled garden ultimately drove me away from Apple.

@bradenslen Thanks, this was helpful. I hunted around for search services with their own engines, and it's a very short list. I came up with Google, Bing, Brave, Yandex, Mojeek. I'd thought Kagi at least partly did its own search. Wrong I guess.

@JohnBrady Kagi uses it's own search engine Telcis (sp?) combined with Marginalia for it's SmallWeb search. But Telcis is really small. Someday, Kagi might develop their own spider and index for general search but there has been no word of that yet. Still points to them, by all accounts they have put together a good meta-search engine without using either Google or Bing.