I’ve had real issues trying to search the fediverse. I’ve had bad luck with the search function of both Lemmy and Mbin, and while https://fedi-search.com/ exists the Whoogle server is down and either way the search just seems to be a list of various fediverse instances and nothing fancier (which also means that it’s not a complete search?). Other than that it’s quite the hassle to list all the instances you’d like to search for every search. What’s the best way to search the fediverse? What works for you? And is it somehow possible to add a shortcut to e.g., DDG that searches specific sites without having to type for example site:lemmy.dbzer0.com and all the other instances all the time?
What if search itself were a federated function? Although I’m a software dev I really don’t know much about the mechanics of large-scale search engines such as Google, but I know their server farms somehow share the load of performing searches and maintaining whatever database they maintain to optimize searching. Seems like the fediverse could do search in a similar way. I’m just saying your critique of the idea, although well thought out, seems like a critique of a particular strategy. It’s not obvious to me that the very idea of federated search is outlandish.