However, Powerset is certainly not alone in its endeavour to come out on top in this competitive field and try to surpass Google's success. In fact, a number of established search engines as well as newcomers such as ChaCha, hakia and Snap, are trying to emulate what Google does best. Furthermore, countless search engine start-ups rely on Google as their primary driver of traffic.
But, despite how it may seem, the majority of search engines out there are not trying to take on Google. Instead, they're focusing on specialized areas of the search world, such as blog postings, medical information or sports figures. In fact, Silicon Valley is teeming with start-ups whose main objective is simply to be bought out by Google, Yahoo! or Microsoft.
"You don't need to be number one to be worth billions of dollars," said Allen Morgan, a partner at Mayfield Fund, a venture capital firm that invested $10 million in the search engine Snap.
Yet that's not to say there aren't big rewards for those whose aim is to be "a better Google" - a title that Powerset is keen to take on.
"There's definitely a segment of the market that thinks we are crazy," said Charles Moldow, a partner at Foundation Capital, a venture capital firm that is Powerset's principal financial backer. "[But] in 2000, some people thought Google was crazy."
Powerset recently received $12 million in financing to develop its "natural-language" search engine, while hakia, a similar search engine, received $16 million. Meanwhile, ChaCha, a search engine which uses paid researchers as virtual reference librarians, acquired $6.1 million.
So what's driving the emergence of all these new search engines when there are already so many out there? It's simple: the market for search is too large to resist. Google, which handles about half of all internet searches in the US, is valued at $141 billion - so anyone who can get their hands on even a small share of this market could face large rewards.
However, gaining leverage in this industry undoubtedly requires hard work. Out of the dozens of search engine start-ups that have been introduced in recent years, not one had more than a one per cent share of the US search market in November. A prime example can be found in A9, a search engine owned by Amazon.com. While A9 displayed innovative features and received positive reviews, it only ate into a miniscule share of the market
"It's hard for me to believe that anybody thinks they can take Google's business from Google. But to call the game over because Google has been such a success would be to deny history," said Randy Komisar, a venture capitalist who was once known as Silicon Valley's 'virtual CEO'.
The willingness of so many companies to make multimillion-dollar investments to take on Google and other large search companies represents a significant change from the internet's fledgling years. After all, when Microsoft dominated the technology world in the late 1990s, investors wanted to avoid competing with the software company. Current pursuits are not only feeding an optimism in the realm of technology, but are also shedding light on the notion that everyone and everything revolves around search these days.
Steve Newcomb, a Powerset founder, believes that his company could become the next Google. However, he said that if Google or any other search engine perfected natural-language search before Powerset, his company would make a great acquisition for one of the other search companies. "We are a huge story no matter what," he said.
