Search engines whose revenue is based on advertising will ultimately be tuned to steer you to the ad foodchain. All the incentives are aligned towards and all the metrics ultimately in service of, profit for advertisers. Not in the 99% of people who can convinced to consume something by ads? Welp, screw you.
Search engines should be something you pay for. Surely search engine powerusers can afford to pay for such a service. If Google makes $1 per user per month or something, that's not too high a bar to get over.
Search engines should be like libraries. At least some tiny sliver of the billions we spend on education and research should go to, you know, actually organizing the world's information and making it universally available.
I see another issue here: companies like Google prioritize information to 1) keep their users and 2) maximize their profit.
If you move data organization to another type of organization (non-profit, state, universities - private or public), then the question of data prioritization becomes highly political. What should be exposed? What should not? What to put first? ...
It is already, but to a smaller extend since money-making companies have little interest in data meaning, and high interest in the commercial value of their users.
