I agree. Advertising is not a great business model on its own, particularly with the proliferation of adblockers. If there was a way to get people supporting more paid content then IMO the quality of content could also improve. But who knows how all this will go in the end. There's always been a lot of high quality free content on the Internet as well, just because people are willing to share their knowledge with each other.
krschultz's comment is really relevant as well.[1] In a complete system, search should actually know about what you subscribe to already, and not penalise those results for you.
Again, Steve Jobs. Under Steve Jobs, I think Apple would figure out a way to make the user experience terrific, without the end game of "Apple hordes every piece of your existence" like Google.
Steve Jobs reinvented PCs, reinvented mobile. I think "the next Steve Jobs" could do the same thing for search. I'm less and less certain of Google's monopoly on that space going forward. It's still built around Web 1.0 tech, has hacks into Web 2.0, but there's a Web 3.0 it's not ready for.
krschultz's comment is really relevant as well.[1] In a complete system, search should actually know about what you subscribe to already, and not penalise those results for you.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14492870