@robin Just wanted to say I really enjoyed the article, and think your outlining of how the dynamic has shifted between content production and search providers was succinct and super insightful!
I'm not entirely sure if I agree that engines providing APIs are big part of the solution. Brave, Bing, Mojeek, etc.. all have search APIs and I don't think integrating them in the browser would greatly change the dynamic you describe (and if it did, I suspect APIs would suddenly be turned off).