"Google (GOOG), the dominant player in search and search advertising,
is seeing its competitors constantly nipping at its heels and it
seemingly ignores them and continues to innovate. While Yahoo (YHOO),
Microsoft (MSFT), and Interactive's Ask (IACI) are trying to revamp,
recreate and reinvigorate the search experience in the hopes of
gaining market share and hence more advertisers, Google is padding its
lead and running away with first rate technology innovations.

Ask.com has some neat complete search functions and combines results
of all types of media and even includes little previews, but it is
still a minor player in the search game. Microsoft's failed MSN unit
is still around and kicking and losing ever more money, while the
revamped Live platform has yet to gain any traction and Microsoft is
continually seeing search share losses. Microsoft even tried to lure
searchers by offering them points in exchange for prizes when they did
searches and even included games inside MSN Messenger that forced
users to search for answers to questions. Sorry Softie, but that's not
gonna win over the advertisers and not gonna get people to give up on
Google altogether.

Google is taking localized and personalized search into realms that
its competitors can only dream of getting to. This is all due to that
massive technology spending to build out an infrastructure of
computing that can handle incredible complexity when it comes to
something that should be as simple as search. That is why Google gets
a majority of search traffic, has higher click-through rates for its
tailored advertisements, continues to grow rapidly and demands a
market premium via a lofty valuation.

Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask right now are simply out of their league when
it comes to search innovations. Google has the brains, with its
thousands of dedicated creative employees, it has the brawn, with its
incredible breadth of technology infrastructure, and it has bank roll
to keep innovating in ever expanding new areas of not only Search
Technology but all aspects of our daily Internet lives."

Full article is here: http://wcpowertechfund.blogspot.com/2007/10/yahoos-new-search-tool-sh...
Enjoy

--
Chris