Yes, someone was bound to say it.  In fact, I’m willing to bet that someone already has.  Google “is bigger than U.S. Steel.”  Cringe at the thought of it or not, it’s more than likely true.  Its recent acquisition of the popular bookmark site, Digg, the search engine gorilla’s dominance in the World Wide Web has gone up yet another notch.

However, with the release of the new, more powerful search engine named Cuil (pronounced as “Cool”) it appears that Google’s days at the summit of success are numbered.

Not really though, but it might just offer some stiff competition–probably more than Yahoo or Microsoft–in due time.  Then maybe it could dethrone Google one day.  Cuil prides itself with raw power.  Its developers (who were former Google engineers with IT degrees) have developed an algorithm for Cuil that could scan through 120 billion website from the comfort of your free laptop and desktop; that’s three times the scanning power of the current Google engine.

Though pure muscle aside, many internet analysts agree that it will take more than the ability to search for websites effectively to unseat Google.  As of 2007, Google made up %40 of the net’s online search dollars through its extensive advertising.  Not only that, but as internet analyst Scott Kessler mentioned, “Google is receiving so many searches per second and gathering incremental information from new [auction] bids and new advertisements that the search engine gets more relevant and powerful, it’s self-perpetuating.”

So what this probably means is that, forget advertising.  With the way things are going now it looks like no one can ever beat Google “at their own game.”  Yahoo and Microsoft certainly tried, and look where it got them–not even close I can tell you that.  So the only foreseeable avenue where Cuil could surpass Google is is said to be through searches.

How they will do it remains a mystery, and it’s certainly exciting to anticipate whatever it is they’ll come up with especially after announcing that (unlike Google) they will not monitor user’s search patterns.  Google apparently does this (so does yahoo and Microsoft) in order to effectively place advertisements where they matter.

In any case, the future sure does look promising for the casual “internet surfer”–does anyone ever use that anymore?