I'm blinded by what you are trying to imply sarcastically.
A rough distributed model could be implemented similar to the way we (hackers/coders) use github as a central repository for a distributed system. People contributing to the index on a private server could do whatever they want but since that instance of the index is not public, no one else will care about what the owner has done to it. Forks can be pushed to a public staging area where others can view it and verify it's accuracy, and then the major players can merge those changes into their forks.
The complaint (with github) that it is hard to figure out the canonical repo is also invalid in this model, as one can start with a fork of Google or Yahoo's public repo, and then build their own through merging or hacking directly on it, just like one can fork Linus' Linux kernel, and then merge in other's forks to incorporate other changes.
Remember, the index itself, as in the raw data taken in by GoogleBot or Yahoo! Slurp bot, would be the shared information. The analysis of the data, as in pagerank and other factors that Google decides makes one page more relevant to a keyword than the other, would not be shared as that is the bread and butter of each engine.
"I have a map of the United States... Actual size. It says, 'Scale: 1 mile = 1 mile.' I spent last summer folding it. I hardly ever unroll it. People ask me where I live, and I say, 'E6."
- Steven Wright
A rough distributed model could be implemented similar to the way we (hackers/coders) use github as a central repository for a distributed system. People contributing to the index on a private server could do whatever they want but since that instance of the index is not public, no one else will care about what the owner has done to it. Forks can be pushed to a public staging area where others can view it and verify it's accuracy, and then the major players can merge those changes into their forks.
The complaint (with github) that it is hard to figure out the canonical repo is also invalid in this model, as one can start with a fork of Google or Yahoo's public repo, and then build their own through merging or hacking directly on it, just like one can fork Linus' Linux kernel, and then merge in other's forks to incorporate other changes.
Remember, the index itself, as in the raw data taken in by GoogleBot or Yahoo! Slurp bot, would be the shared information. The analysis of the data, as in pagerank and other factors that Google decides makes one page more relevant to a keyword than the other, would not be shared as that is the bread and butter of each engine.