Competition is a good thing. If anything, it validates that your idea is a good one, or at least one shared by others. Google is a giant, but its success with

Competition is a good thing. If anything, it validates that your idea is a good one, or at least one shared by others. Google is a giant, but its success with search hasn't proven to translate into de facto dominance of other areas of the web. In most cases they've had to end up buying their competition -- YouTube won the video battle, Google Docs & Spreadsheets was acquired from Writely, Google Earth was acquired from Keyhole... So don't let Google's interest in a problem scare you away from an idea -- use it to motivate you. The web is the one niche in the economy where a 3-person team can topple a multi-billion dollar corporation.