You may (or may not) be right about DARPA, but you assert they were government funded. And my main point is that government (funding) is the economically optim

You may (or may not) be right about DARPA, but you assert they were government funded. And my main point is that government (funding) is the economically optimal approach for services which produce diffuse value. See also the comment from marginella_nu in the post I linked to. Marginella is building a fantastic alternative search engine https://search.marginalia.nu/ https://search.marginalia.nu/ Their view: "Arguably the biggest most unsolved problem in search is how to make a profit" i.e., capturing the value produced. kagi https://kagi.com/ https://kagi.com/ attempts to do this with a paid tier. I hope it works for them, great product and really responsive team. Bing tries to capture value by collecting the Microsoft tax; not exactly government-level, but on those lines.