0, nil, nada, zip... But neither the other SEs do.. (Well, they do a lil' - like 10/day or so - in total )
I think the next search engine is going to come out of universities, just as Google did. I do not mean started by university students, though that is likely, but being used by them. When you see that shift in college dorms to another search engine, you are probably seeing the next big one. If you hear about it first in the media, it is just PR aimed at garnering investment and/or pumping the stock.
Honestly, I think Accoona has a chance. Their refine search tool is pretty cool. However, they are pretty good at PR buzz. When they "first" launched about 3 years ago, they had President Clinton give a speech. Here is a link that mentions his speech.
Well my motto is Aim for 1st and settle for 3rd (from playing poker). So if they aim at Google and they land at lycos or alltheweb. That isn't too bad and should make them a few million in yearly revenue.
Google are the big fist at the moment and it seems they are doing everything they can to remain there. They are providing some great local search results The Google maps is excellent Google images & Groups are very useful But I think the thing that will secure their dominance is the fact that even if no one searched using them the adsense code is on millions of sites that we are all working hard to promote, and the advertisers are all getting traffic from. The only way someone could compete with this is to offer us more advertisers at a better rate, and if that was likely to happen Google could just increase what it pays to us, take a little less for them selves and break the competition before they get a foothold.
It is difficult to beat Google because Google has a brand name. Just like Hoover for Vacuum cleaners. So having a better SE != to market dominance.
When accoona begins to send me the 100,000s of visitors a month Google does, then I'll pay attention. My count so far this month for accoona... 0. What a fine waste of $100 million.
The one that I am keeping my eye on is the Chinese search engine, Baidu: Baidu I doubt most people in North America know much about it, and therefore dismiss it, but it is growing fast. And like everything else--such as manufacturing, high-tech, etc.--they are making a determined effort to be leaders in all fields. If they set their minds on making Baidu the best search engine, they will just throw more people onto the job and before you know it, it will be the best.
Acoona is Chinese owned as welll... so I guess they are already doing that... But Baidu is definitely a big competitor... I definitely agree with that.
Has anyone else noticed that the site is only PR4? I would think that for such a massive site as they seem to think they are, they would at least be a PR5...
I just wanted to mention, there was an Article Thurs. in the WSJ about a real possible Google competitor, some people might laugh but ask.com is nice for searches from my experience, and this -- http://ptech.wsj.com/ptech.html Maybe they won't amass (sp?) the money on hand of Google or have their momentum to get into so many other things but these 2nd tier search engines cut right into Google's cash cow, it won't be pretty, Google needs to find new cash flows to continue to grow at such an astronomical rate. Eric http://www.ericfrost.com
I fully agree. Google's so large now that there's plenty of room for niche players now. Just like walmart (niche stores around walmarts actually do quite well generally). Witness that Google's not #1 in Russia, or likely many other places. I think Google's got some serious competition in Quebec, Canada as well - some other french search engine that people use instead of Google.