Doesn't work over time. You link somewhere, the other site owner a month later decides they want to use Google Analytics, now you're linking your readers back to the web they're trying to avoid.

> And the biggest challenge with Gemini is creating a great search engine.

Not really, it's discovery in general, which can be solved in many ways that don't involve search engines; Wikipedia's references are often a good discovery tool, for example. I use aggregators to find Gemini content and follow discussions which are happening across the space.