How so? Search was way less capital intensive than AI to develop. We started with dozens of search engines back in the 90s and we still ended up with a near monopoly.

Edit: All major AI companies have millions if not billions of funding either from VCs or parent companies. You can't start an AI company "in your garage" and be "ramen profitable".

Edit 2: You don't even need to monopolize anything. All major search engines are ad-driven and insert sponsored content above "organic" search results because it's such an obvious way to make money from search. So even if there wasn't a product monopoly, there's still a business model "monopoly". Why would the same pattern not repeat for "sponsored" purchases for agentic shopping?