If anyone has an idea how in the modern day one could run a search engine, be sustainable and provide quality results without being influenced by advertisers, SEO hacks and also maintain security around it all - infected pages etc. - they are not on HN and are probably too busy implementing their idea. Kidding aside as a thought exercise what can people think of to kind of sort of make modern search engine work?

I am asking because I get the feeling that there's not much you can do and Google's way is the only thing anyone can do and still be in business. Now how much they rely on ad revenue and how much more they have to compromise is another story. Probably Google should be thinking of including better search to paying Google One customers?

Biggest problem is inertia - that would have to be solved - one way is that Google search gets useless and people have an option to move to something better. I doubt this will happen. Other way is someone builds not just a marginally better product but a 10x better product and people move there - I don't see that happening anytime soon either.