Considering the potential of the fediverse, is there any version of that for search engines? Something to break up a major point of internet centralization, fragility, and inertia to change (eg Google will never, ever, offer IPFS searches). Not only would decentralization be inherently beneficial, it would mean we’re no longer compelled to hand over private information to centralized unvetted corporations like Google, Microsoft, and DuckDuckGo.
Maybe YaCy is what you’re thinking of? It would need some extra work on the backend for federation, but since YaCy builds its own search index, this would be a good idea.