"The question in search is: what would it take to knock off Google? Is it possible to develop a search engine that can produce better results than Google and, at the same time, capture the imagination of Internet users? "

Nice post by Mak Evans of the National Post :)-

http://evans.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2006/10/3/2382794.html

I think its possible to make a better search engine than Google, but Google already has such a huge following, it would be very heard to steal many of their users.

True and to unseat Google, In my opinion you need at lot of $$$$$$ *cough*Microsoft*cough* and innovation *cough*Not Microsoft*cough*

sohil : i think you need some some cough syrup :)-

Innovations is critical correct ?? is not innovations occuring outside the sphere of googleplex ?? Like john mentioned, are the crowds so blind that they follow blindly without consideration of other technlogies ?? ie. steal the userbase away from google ??

/pd, Innovations are occurring outside of Googleplex. The innovations are too small to make an impact or aren't widely known. Try Kosmix for example. However these innovations don't have the necessary money to market their technology (a similar spot Google once stood at).

Don't forget that whoever wants to beat Google doesn't only have to create technology with equal quality results (which takes a lot of hardware and brains) – they have to maintain those results when they become #1, become most blackhat SEOs will start to target (and exploit) them only then when they're used by a majority of searchers.