TheStreet.com has an interesting article about Google and the Power of Myth. It’s an interesting take on Google’s current power on the Internet. Mentioning PageRank as one of Google’s great innovations, the author, Kevin Kelleher, essentially asks, what has Google done lately.
Sure, we see mass launchings of new products, Google Earth, Mobil Search, Web Accelerator (a real genius invention there!), but nothing that Google had done recently really measures up to PageRank in terms of innovation.
In recent years, Google has triumphed less from presenting its own ingenious ideas than from perfecting those of others. The past decade’s other great leap forward in search technology came in the ability to monetize it.
Sounds a lot like what Microsoft often gets accused of. Fortunately for Google, none of the other search engines have been all that innovative either. MSN did develop their link block analysis, which is supposed to be pretty clever, but they have not been able to market that as Google did with PageRank.
I think that if any search engine is going to overtake Google, it will take more than better search results, they will need a substantial new invention that will change the way we surf (or view) the Internet.