Lately I see some articles on Google’s increased competition. Here are my thoughts:

Leaving Yahoo / Altavista / whatever for Google was easy. Google consistently provided much better search results on all queries. There was no question as to which engine was better.

Now, even if some other search engines (MSN, Yahoo) have surpassed Google in search quality, it’s difficult to verify it for a fact. Search quality among engines seems equal and it would take a complicated scientific experiment to sort them correctly by quality. And since I am already used to Google, I don’t have a reason to leave it based on quality.

The only thing that could make me switch is the various add on services (e.g. image, video, blog, local, map, news, Usenet and desktop searches), but even in these areas Google seems ahead of or at least as good as the competition.

Someone must come up with a new killer feature that will take search engines to the next level, in order for me (and probably lots more) to switch from Google.