Instead of spending millions or billions on giveaways to private companies, why not fund a public alternative? Sure, search isn't cheap. But governments should consider information access to be of key importance to democratic participation.
An open source, public benefit search engine would be a really valuable thing to have, which no private company does or ever will find it viable to provide. And I don't even want it to be the only search engine. Commercial search engines will probably still have the edge in various ways, for various use cases. But why not have a public option as one point in the landscape?
If someone is going to "organise the world's information" I'd prefer it to be a democratically controlled government, not an unaccountable for-profit corporation. I know that's an ideological position that many here won't share.
The bleak reality is that most Americans trust private corporations more than their own government. Government-sponsored search is literally 1984. If it's just a competitor, we've seen that unless there is an external force driving the initiatives, government ventures are often just less successful than unfettered private corporations (e.g. NASA post Space Race).
American society is by-and-large self-organizing and this is an American bias. America has done quite well for itself (better than many countries in fact) and so I see no need to drastically change this simply to have search competition. It's fine to have your ideological position, but there's really no need for it.
An open source, public benefit search engine would be a really valuable thing to have, which no private company does or ever will find it viable to provide. And I don't even want it to be the only search engine. Commercial search engines will probably still have the edge in various ways, for various use cases. But why not have a public option as one point in the landscape?
If someone is going to "organise the world's information" I'd prefer it to be a democratically controlled government, not an unaccountable for-profit corporation. I know that's an ideological position that many here won't share.