If Google search vanished overnight the world would turn to DDG within a day. Ok, that would probably crash their servers but I'm sure they and other search engines could scale up quickly.
(I just wonder if microsoft has some sort of method of identifying or matching queries with actual people)
Also, what happens to all that data in stowed away in other services? What happens, with Gmail if it's separated from the ads division? Do they suddenly start charging everyone to use it? Can they still run ads in Gmail? Would they have access to the infra serving those ads? If they flame out completely do we lose all our data? Will they give us a chance to export it? In what format?....
I just can't help but feel these sorts of breaks would be extremely difficult to get right.
Speaking as one who worked with many who'd cheared Microsoft over IBM, who myself once saw Google, and later Apple, as just deserts for Microsoft's own monopoly abuses, and presently relies principally on DDG for Web search, and acknowledges that it too relies heavily, though not exclusively, on Microsoft's Bing.
Providing a useful tech capacity without winner-take-all monopolies should be the goal. And result.
All of them would be ad supported too, thanks to the fact that we in the software industry have conditioned users to expect things for "free" and advertisers would also want to put the bulk of their ad dollars toward the most effective search engine to get the most bang for the buck, again reinforcing the trend toward monopoly.
The only alternative that comes to mind is to make search a government run public utility but, as I'm sure a number of you are thinking rather loudly right now, that comes with its own set of problems.
Google Maps, though, is still unquestionably king. It is ludicrous how poor the alternatives are.