[cryptica]

In the early days of the internet, search engines (and there were multiple, not just one major one) would show a broader variety of results so it was easier to stumble upon new interesting stuff and small, growing communities.

Nowadays, all the top results of Google are websites which are already popular so it's not possible to 'discover' a new community through Google. Other less popular search engines use very similar algorithms based on backlinks so they all show more or less the same results as each other.

VCs aren't interested in funding Google competitors, unfortunately. I'm sure there exists algorithms which are good at finding relevant websites and which are different than the one used by Google but it would disrupt the current economic order.