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> Moreover, Google indisputably has a monopoly over web search: ~93% market share. (I'll never understand why we've done nothing legally about this.)

There are other free search engines. Also Google makes money as an advertiser, not as a search service. Search itself has always been free, even before Google existed.



Some of the first search engines I used were paid: JSTOR and LexisNexis.


I can’t tell if you are trolling or not. Both of those are alive and well. Since at least the early 1990s, there have been free search engines. eg: Archie, Infoseek, Alta Vista, Ask Jeeves, Yahoo, etc…


I’m serious. Just saying: paid options like LexisNexis (and a couple others) offered online information search services that date back to the 70s.

The 90s was the advent of free World Wide Web search. It wasn’t the advent of online search engines.


I mean, card catalogues and the Dewey decimal system go back a century before that. Public libraries go back much further in different forms.

Just because you can pay for information/search, doesn’t mean there isn’t a way to get it for free.

In the context of this thread, these all feel like straw man arguments.


I wouldn't call a card catalog a search engine.


What point are you trying to make?




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