As Google Tinkers with Search, Upstarts Gain Ground

Google's willingness to tinker with its Web search may be opening a gap for new search engines to fill. January saw Google launch Search, plus Your World, a service that adds links shared by friends to the results page a user sees, based on activity collected from other Google services such as Google+ and Gmail.

February brought news that Google would correlate users' activity across all its sites, to better target its ads. At about the same time as these controversial changes were implemented, usage of two search startup companies, Blekko and DuckDuckGo, started to climb rapidly, and the two haven't looked back since. The two sites still command only a tiny percentage of online searches, but their recent growth suggests they didn't receive millions from venture capitalists in vain. Both companies make a point of emphasizing their relatively simple design and a commitment to protecting users' privacy, values some people claim Google has abandoned with its social efforts.