Rich Skrenta has written some interesting stuff on his blog (http://www.skrenta.com - nothing recent though) but I have to admit Cuil made me nervous about a "stealth search engine". I haven no idea how blekko compares, but I like the DuckDuckGo approach much better. Best of luck to them both, they've got their work cut out for them.

I'm really curious as to how search startups like this get funding. The search market is so polarized right now that only a couple sites (read Google and Microsoft) actually have any share. So you're either Google or Microsoft, or you get no revenue at all.

Are they showing the investors something radically new behind the scenes? Or are the investors simply ignorant of the market? Of the new search engines gone public so far (e.g. Cuil), it's pretty much been the same old "text box entry leading to a list of links" story, and invariably a flop.

Google was such a massive success that any search startup with a chance of being a "Google killer", or even just a worthy competitor, seems to be finding investors.

If 1% share is a billion dollars in annual revenue, there's some real opportunity there.

I think everyone is investing in search by looking in their rear-view mirror. I doubt the real "Google killer" will be a "text box entry leading to a list of links" search engine of the same nature as Google.

Isn't it a bit more "all or nothing" when it comes to market share and revenues though? I mean you can't just say you've got 100th of the audience of Google and thereby generate 100th of their revenues because of the way advertisers work - they'd probably still go to Google as they have 99% of the audience. Unless you were going for a niche market. Does that make sense?

1% of google would put you in the top 500 of websites, you certainly will find advertisers.

The search market is large and lucrative enough that, no matter how uphill a battle it appears to be for a new search engine to establish a hold in it, there's likely to be a continual trickle of contenders being funded.

That said, I would hope that blekko is attempting something that will distinguish itself from existing search engines.