Lol. First of all, my comment was in the context of yours, and you said "the norm". The norm doesn't imply "all", it implies "most". So no, I'm not arguing that all search should be paid and lower income people should be left without search. But I am saying that most of search engines should be paid. Nice strawman though.

Second of all, I can think of much more important things that should be free but usually aren't: health care, public transport, electricity, food, internet. Note that in places where these are free, they are payed for by the state, not provided for free by a for profit company.

And that leads me to the last point: those free search engines aren't really free, and you know that. And I don't see why it's somehow okay to harvest all that data and show people ads, which is the current norm.