“The future might look bleak for retailers that aren’t Amazon — if it weren’t for thousands of brilliant software engineers who have contributed their brain power and creativity to open-source projects like the Apache Software Foundation. Thanks to their collective efforts, AI technology has been advancing beyond the gilded doors of monopolies like Amazon, Alphabet/Google, Microsoft and Facebook. What that means is that most retailers have the opportunity to provide their customers with search functionality on par with and perhaps better than Amazon. It also means that retailers that don’t address the sorry state of search for their customers will quickly be left behind.”