The more I think about it the more I just don’t think it’s possible to have an internet that is supported by ad-revenue and isn’t user-hostile. The incentives are diametrically opposed.
I wonder if an argument could be made that this would actually pay for itself. Given that productive use of search is at odds with commercial use of search, maybe a publicly funded search engine could increase GWP by 0.01% which would be about $87B a year.
PBS/NPR like solutions would be subject to co-opting forces as with other search engines. Look at wikipedia, touted as a “social good” but undermined by collective activism edits in the name of various ideologies claiming pure intentions of “social good”.
We need a PBS/NPR of search engines.