So, here’s the question: why has Firefox been able to do so well in the browser market against the dominant player, while a new and exciting player has yet to e

So, here’s the question: why has Firefox been able to do so well in the browser market against the dominant player, while a new and exciting player has yet to emerge in the search engine market to take on Google? Firefox is a shippable product and Google Search is a service. Creating and operating a service is very expensive, particularly given the amount of data involved in searching the web. There is an open source alternative, Lucene, which again is a product and not a service, but they are still far from Google (btw, has anyone applied Lucene to web search?). Search is a very difficult problem. And Google Search is ubiquitous so competition is left to niche markets anyway. Octopart.com (electronic parts) and WorldWideScience.org (scientific research), for example. Google Search is becoming more specific too though (theatre/show time data, weather, music/band results, ISBN, etc...) so the gaps are narrowing. Plus it works well -- there's no compelling story to replace it at this point. Ultimately, if it's possible to satisfy everyone's search needs from a single box, Google's box will be the first to do it.