we are likely to think of our search engine as something like a public utility—a combination of an encyclopedia and a streetlamp, a single source supplying endless amounts of information to anyone. In economic terms, that is a poor analogy. Utilities charge for whatever they provide—water, gas, or electricity—and search firms don't. Utilities typically don't have much competition, and search firms do. Yet we trust search engines as though they were public utilities because their results just flow to us, and because the results seem consistent with our expectations.
