Dethroning Google

Here's what: Google's wearing a big, red target on its back and, as long as it's the dominant player, companies from the tiniest startups to Microsoft will be locking, loading and taking their best shots. How it plays out could have big implications for software development down the road and for which platform receives the lion's share of technology investment.

No one can deny that Google has been the king of search. It even has an entry in the dictionary as a transitive verb, an honor previously saved for the likes of Xerox. The search giant got that way by being good at what it does: finding what users are searching for and presenting the results in a format that is easy to glance through. It doesn't hurt that the company found a way to make money from its service, either.

Early on in this battle, Yahoo was a leader -- until Google passed it. That was due in no small part to Yahoo's own (admitted) missteps. Microsoft spent years and spared little expense to take a shot at Google, first by launching its Live Search (which couldn't topple Google), then by trying to buy Yahoo (an attempt that failed). All the while, Google leveraged its search success to pole-vault into top spots in online advertising, online applications (SaaS) and other successful ways to make money. Since then, challengers have come and gone, and Google is still standing.

Now comes the latest chapter, and what could be the fun part.

Yahoo, with renewed vigor under new CEO Carol Bartz, is spending new bucks to get back on its game. That could impact what's spent in other areas of Yahoo, like Zimbra, for example.

Simultaneously, Wolfram Research launched WolframAlpha and almost immediately comparisons to Google started to mount. Many pitted the two against each other to see which responded more accurately to what they were looking for, always pronouncing Google the winner. The problem is WolframAlpha isn't a search engine and never claimed to be. What it does claim to be is a "computational knowledge engine." This means that the engine isn't just sorting through an indexed file of data; it is actually running computations based on what it has been programmed to think the requester is asking.

Soon after WolframAlpha, rumors started circulating about Microsoft's newest attempt. Originally code-named Kumo, the site has gone live under the name "Bing." According to Microsoft, Bing takes a new approach by going beyond search to be a "decision engine." In the end, whoever wins the war will win influence, including over where developers look to build solutions. But with such a huge head start, if Google is going to be broken, it will be in a weak link in the Google chain -- and not its search capability.