I think Google Search is going to eventually become a regulated public utility, and we can look to the telecom industry for an example of how that will go down.

I think Google Search is going to eventually become a regulated public utility, and we can look to the telecom industry for an example of how that will go down. The thing that comes to mind is the fact that Google refuses to allow API access to searching. They used to, with results limited to just five bad results, but quietly removed even that when they released a new tool and discontinued the old one. It struck me at the time that I learned this, as I figured that Google was so large, that search would become like a free public utility that they ran. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised that they don't, but other similar adventures got me to conclude that the API revolution is still in it's barest infancy. But Google instead goes to enormous lengths to protect Search. I might make it a weekend project some day to figure out just what the current state of Google scraping is, that cat and mouse game probably has a fascinating history. This will probably become a point of debate 20 years down the road when antitrust cases on tech giants finally become politically feasible.