Indexing the web is a resource intensive activity tho - if it was federated then the resource cost only increases. I suppose a non-profit is the alternative, bu

Indexing the web is a resource intensive activity tho - if it was federated then the resource cost only increases. I suppose a non-profit is the alternative, but non-profits are not exactly independent unless they have some sort of massive endowment. I'm not trying to disagree with you, it's just a paradoxical problem: to resolve the issue, resources must be accumulated. Accumulating resources means it's hard to resolve the issue (of an independent search engine).