Imagine, if you will, an utopic world where a critical service such as finding anything is not dominated by one (1) entity but an actual number - such as ten (1

Imagine, if you will, an utopic world where a critical service such as finding anything is not dominated by one (1) entity but an actual number - such as ten (10). Sci-fi novels describe this hypothetical market structure as a "competitive market". In this utopic arrangement, users of search services are more-or-less evenly distributed among different search providers, enjoying a variety of different takes on how to find stuff. Search providers, continues the sci-fi imagination, keep innovating and differentiating themselves to keep an edge over competition and please their users. Producers of content, one the other hand, cannot assume much about what the inventive and aggressively competitive group of search providers will accentuate to please their users. So they focus on... improving the quality of their content, which is what they do best anyway. Its a win-win for users and content producers. Alas, search service providers have to actually work for their money. This is slightly discomforting to a few, but not the end of the world. One cannot but admire the imagination of such authors. What bizarre universes they keep inventing.