Start-ups with names like Powerset, Hakia, ChaCha and Snap are hoping to beat the search king at its own game.

An excerpt from the NYT story:

These ambitious quests reflect the renewed optimism sweeping technology centers like Silicon Valley and fueling a nascent Internet boom. It also shows how much the new Internet economy resembles a planetary system where everything and everyone orbits around search in general, and around Google in particular.

Silicon Valley is filled with start-ups whose main business proposition is to be bought by Google, or for that matter by Yahoo or Microsoft. Countless other start-ups rely on Google as their primary driver of traffic or on Google’s powerful advertising system as their primary source of income. Virtually all new companies compete with Google for scarce engineering talent. And divining Google’s next move has become a fixation for scores of technology blogs and a favorite parlor game among technology investors.

“There is way too much obsession with search, as if it were the end of the world,” said Esther Dyson, a well-known technology investor and forecaster. “Google equals money equals search equals search advertising; it all gets combined as if this is the last great business model.”

It may not be the last great business model, but Google has proved that search linked to advertising is a very large and lucrative business, and everyone — including Ms. Dyson, who invested a small sum in Powerset — seems to want a piece of it.

Since the beginning of 2004, venture capitalists have put nearly $350 million into no fewer than 79 start-ups that had something to do with Internet search, according to the National Venture Capital Association, an industry group.

An overwhelming majority are not trying to take Google head on, but rather are focusing on specialized slices of the search world, like searching for videos, blog postings or medical information. Since Google’s stated mission is to organize all of the world’s information, they may still find themselves in the search giant’s cross hairs. That is not necessarily bad, as being acquired by Google could be a financial bonanza for some of these entrepreneurs and investors.

But in the current boom, there is money even for those with the audacious goal of becoming a better Google.

The article points out that the odds are long of any start-up succeeding. But it also notes that as Google pushes to diversify into other areas of online activity, it may take its eye off the search engine ball. Five years ago, AltaVista and Excite were hot search engines that were ultimately supplanted.

Another entrant into this competition is Wikia, reports the BBC:

The creator of the Wikipedia encyclopedia is turning his attention to search engines.

Jimmy Wales, the man behind the collaborative online reference work, is planning to create a "people-powered" search site.

The Search Wikia project will not rely on computer algorithms to determine how relevant webpages are to keywords.

Instead the results generated by the search engine will be decided and edited by humans.

The project will stand apart from the Wikipedia encyclopedia and will be overseen by Wikia Inc.