Is Google’s 20-year dominance of search in peril?

Near the bay in Mountain View, California, sits one of the biggest profit pools in business history. The site is the home of Google, whose search engine has for two decades been humanity’s preferred front door to the internet—and advertisers’ preferred front door to humanity. Every second of every day, Google processes perhaps 100,000 web searches—and, thanks to its clever algorithm, serves up uncannily relevant answers. That power has turned Google into a verb. It also opens up billions of daily opportunities to sell ads alongside the answers to searchers’ queries. The results’ accuracy keeps users coming back, and rivals at bay: all other search engines combined account for barely a tenth of daily searchers.