Can Google Stay on Top of the Web?

As Bing, Facebook, Twitter, and less well-known upstarts nip at its heels, Google has hundreds of wizards racing to come up with smarter answers. As the Web evolves, there's no guarantee that search, or Google, will remain at its center. Not so long ago, portals such as AOL and Yahoo dominated the Internet as most people's first stop online. They lost ground as search improved and helped guide people quickly to sites they were looking for. Now Twitter and others are becoming significant drivers of people's attention to Web sites—Google's raison d'être.