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Powerset has just announced that it is out of beta. It is a search engine for Wikipedia articles. I have never had trouble finding Wikipedia articles, so I think I'm going to take the Seth Godin path here: What problem are they trying to solve? New products can be good, but they only do well if they solve a problem.
According to CNN, Google might be facing a brain drain as employees are leaving comfortable jobs to make their own way with their own start ups. (Link: Where Does Google Go Next?)
This reminds me of an article by Robert Cringely that he wrote in May of 2007. In this article (Link: The Final Days of Google), Cringely suggested that Google's downfall would not be Microsoft, but some uber-smart staffer leaving to start their own company.
Of course there will be turn over with 18,000+ employees on the payroll. But these Googlers that left, were not satisfied with developing their projects inside the Google walls. And despite Google offering large sums of cash to keep these people, they left anyway.
It doesn't mean they will create so called Google-killers. But it does demonstrate that even super hot companies cool down eventually and loose some luster.
Slate.com seems to think so in this interesting article. They touch upon some of the old snake oil perspectives of SEO that need to stay in the past. Certainly there were/are people/firms that are not highly ethical, but SEO better or worse than a financial planner. Some really want to help, some just want your money.
