89,004 local governments existed in the United States in 2012. By extension, there are a shit-ton of public sector websites including schools and libraries. So why can’t there be a public-funded search engine just for indexing all the public service websites?
Citizens who need to access a public service should not have to visit some shitty Google-like search engine by a surveillance advertiser to find a public resource. Google and Microsoft should not be gateways to public access. They can offer their shitty service for private sector searches but governments should have sovereignty from that. If I have to ask tech giants what is the URL for my secretary of state, it’s a fucked up dependency.
It also shouldn’t just be a search engine. There should also be a hierarchical structured directory. A public service directory plus search engine would be inherently ad-free and tracker free, federally funded.
Progress needed.