Mojeek

European Alternative to:

• Google Search

A British search engine that runs its own crawler and its own index, which is much rarer than it sounds. Mojeek is based in Crawley and was started in 2004 by Marc Smith, who has kept the company independent ever since.

Why it matters

• An independent index, not a Bing or Google reseller, which is what most "alternative" search engines actually are
• No tracking, no behavioural profiling, no ad auctions based on your queries
• A simple UI, with a focus toggle ("Mojeek Focus") to weight results toward specific topic communities
• An emotion-classification feature for results, which you can take or leave

How it stays alive

Mojeek funds itself through search APIs sold to other privacy-friendly products, plus a small Pro tier for power users. The company is small and self-funded rather than venture-backed, which is partly the point.

Honestly

The index is smaller than Google's and you'll notice it on niche or very recent queries. For a lot of everyday searches it's perfectly good, and you can fall back to a "!g" bang to a bigger engine when you need to. The reason to use Mojeek is the principle: a working European search engine that doesn't depend on the duopoly.