[foxylad]

> That shows the search algorithms ... are good enough and Google can be eventually disrupted

I doubt this. I'm guessing that 90% of Google Search's development effort is concentrated on defeating SEO, and as soon as a new competitor succeeds well enough to attract SEO attention, their results will suddenly turn to custard.

The competitor then has to combat the extremely sophisticated SEO practises developed against Google over the years. This is likely to be an even bigger barrier to disruption than building market share against Google.

[jedwhite]

You're assuming here that Google's primary interest is consumers, but their paying customers are the advertisers. The reality is that the worse the organic results are, the more likely a user is to click on the ads instead, and that's how Google makes money.

At the least that's a perverse incentive, and at worst it's a corrupting influence.

Whether it is conscious or not, Google does better financially when there is more SEO spam in results.

That's why the better Google does financially, the worse the search results are getting.

[aconsult1]

I doubt this very much myself too! I little wishful thinking to be honest.

However you're arguing as if new competitors had to monetize the same way Google does and that's not the only game available. Imagine a competitor that doesn't monetize clicks but works on donations (like wikipedia does). If results are higher quality than Google's the users will follow. Or maybe a search engine that promotes a particular product like a CRM tool for example.

Disruption typically doesn't come in obvious ways or else someone else would have done it (including Google and its gazillion dollars).