That makes no sense. Search is more like a map or address book or perhaps a pamphlet station. What they choose to prioritize/display is inherently editorial. Why should that powe be given to the government?

I definitely do not trust the government to give better results than google.

In fact, I would expect them to actively censor and promote their interests. Also, would other people just not be allowed to make search engines? Wouldn't google v2 just take over again?

That’s close to my theory as well, Googlebot is almost universally allowed, building the index happened at the right time to become to big to block. Trying to deep crawl to Google’s level may be impossible now, and maybe one way to encourage innovation in search/discovery is to force the raw crawl results for others to parse & rank.

Remember how bad internet search was before Google? It would still be that bad today if the government was in charge of it.

There is definitely a case to be made there.

In a very idealistic case, I would even go further and say it should be under the umbrella of the UN to accommodate other cultures, and be politics-agnostic.

I do believe that we are at the time when decent internet access should be pushed by the UN (or any other entity, hopefully in a non-commercial non-political way like food, shelter, and education.