Searching in the Internet for some object characterised
by its attributes in the form of data, such as a hotel in
a certain city whose price is less than something, is one of our
most common activities when we access the Web. We discuss this
problem in a general setting, and compute the average amount of
time and the energy it takes to find an object in an infinitely large
search space. We consider the use of N search agents which act
concurrently. Both the case where the search agent knows which
way it needs to go to find the object, and the case where the
search agent is perfectly ignorant and may even head away from
the object being sought. We show that under mild conditions
regarding the randomness of the search and the use of a time-out,
the search agent will always find the object despite the fact that
the search space is infinite. We obtain a formula for the average
search time and the average energy expended by N search agents
acting concurrently and independently of each other. We see that
the time-out itself can be used to minimise the search time and
the amount of energy that is consumed to find an object. An
approximate formula is derived for the number of search agents
that can help us guarantee that an object is found in a given
time, and we discuss how the competition between search agents
and other agents that try to hide the data object, can be used
by opposing parties to guarantee their own success.