Yes you’re right there is an opportunity for paid not for profit services as alternatives to Google, Facebook, etc . However we need to ask ourselves why they don’t exist. I’m hopeful that maybe they don’t exist because nobody’s created them yet. But the realist in me says that people have already tried, and their ideas never were able to grow because these kinds of products see slow growth without revenue or investment. Maybe there is a “critical mass” where once the product gets big enough it can start to pay for itself just by a few paid subscribers who either are paying for a premium version or are making donations.
I would think that it might be possible to make a paid, not for profit search engine since it wouldn’t need the network effect of many users necessary to start a social network. The technology would be very hard to develop or license. But again who would pay for a search engine, when they get it for free? I would not. I would just continue to ad block Google.
Actually the more I analyse it, the more I see that my conclusions in my post “The failure of humane tech” are correct. Ethical products can not compete. They will fail. They are failing. It’s not a prediction, it is an observation of reality. There is no apparent reason to believe this paradigm will change.
The solution is on the side of users, an awakening.