There is sudden rush of search engines. Does this mean Google needs to buck up?

Google has its fingers in almost all the pies and is not on top of any of it. Google could possibly be the biggest web conglomerate with its marquee acquisitions. It acquired the blogging platform Blogger but WordPress still rules. It launched Google Video and then found it is not up to the mark. Went ahead and bought YouTube (I told you cash is king).

Though YouTube still kicks ass, there are bunch of new video content sharing sites which are challenging YouTube. There are bunch of other things which Google took over like FeedBurner. Feedburner used to be good and now it is not – thanks to Google.

I guess my point here is, Google is jack of all trades and king of just one trade – search. Now, even that is being challenged. Not in a traditional way but by filling the gaps.

There were two search engines which came up in the past 8 months. Kosmix and WolframAlpha which are trying to plug the important gaps left by Google. Google is good for searching something you don’t know. But what if you know something and want to know more? This is the question being answered by several search engines.

Though they are not being called as search engines, it is just comfortable to call them that – don’t you think?.

Microsoft’s Bing is the newest kid  on the block. Remember, Microsoft already has its own search engine. But it has launched Bing an new knowledge or decision engine (or whatever they are calling it these days) which is trying to solve many problems

We took a new approach to go beyond search to build what we call a decision engine. With a powerful set of intuitive tools on top of a world class search service, Bing will help you make smarter, faster decisions. We included features that deliver the best results, presented in a more organized way to simplify key tasks and help you make important decisions faster. (Bing)

If you are looking for a largest rodent it will immediately come up with the picture of it. Or at least that’s is what the launch video suggests. Looks very exciting. But back to Google, Is Google missing a trick or two?

Has Google grown too complacent and ignored the search market? I haven’t seen many innovations in the way search results are shown on Google. They look like they were 2 years ago. It also made searchers lazy to look at just the top 5 or 10 links. This comes from the blind confidence in Google. It is Google it has to be right.

In many a times I don’t think Google is right. There are gems which are hidden deep down in the annals. That is the reason why I want one of these engines to really challenge Google or at least fill the gap. Only then will we see some real competition.

With its dominance of search, it is also controlling the biggest advertising platform of adsense. That is a dangerous thing to just rely on Google for all the revenues. Sure, there are other advertisers but none host the same kind of inventory like Google. That power again is coming from its dominance in search.

There is no doubt that Google needs to buck up. But I hope they don’t and let someone else pass them through.

PS : I know none of these engines are challenging Google. But, I want at least one Google challenger.