Standarization sometimes is tied to regulation. E.g. Google could be forced to offer Search API without ads at a reasonable price.
The problem with search in particular is that it gets better as more people use it, because click behavior feeds into the search ranking algorithms. So if you force Google to expose such an API, you effectively degrade the quality of search results for everyone.
$2.99/month for Facebook isn't unreasonable. Could be rolled into your phone or Internet bill. Then we can start looking into social media sales taxes.