Google's only claim is a clean interface with little marketing hype on their homepage. However, they have won over 80% + of www users. There is a better way to search the www - the current method is a little archaic. Someone will figure out a method to pinpoint searches and retrieve information in an organized fashion.
There will always be a better way, but Google is a good bet to find it before anyone else does. There's a reason they have won over 80% of web users, and it isn't a pretty interface. They have some serious rocket scientists in the back room who know as much as anyone on Earth about natural-language searching. New Ph.D.'s in the text-mining area consider Google the prestige employer in that field. It will probably stay that way for some years, until their stock options get old and tired like Yahoo's and Microsoft's are. Google is still minting millionaires, which is always a big draw.
And, as you all know, you can't have archaic and eat it too.
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Michael