Okay, so here are my thoughts. The challenge will not come from within. The brain drain from Google is one thing, the new and "improved" search engines are another.

However, taking a bigger picture look at "who has what" allows another angle.

Most major companies have web analytics software. There are a few major players in this space and they have the information (and they have a significant amount of it).

Not only do they have the information, they have real insight.

They have in their data warehouses -- the following at a bare minimum:

1. Search term
2. Engine used
3. Where from
4. When
5. What they bought
6. What else they looked for
7. What they paid
8. CPC
9. And the list goes on and on and on....

Now, if you are, say, a company such as Omniture, you will have signed some sort of non-disclosure agreement, but the beauty is that you are not disclosing anything. You are creating an index based on learnings from your clients.

They have clients the world over, so when someone types in a search phrase into your new search engine of "Rugby Jersey" and that person is in "London," you know exactly what ads have been served to them, which site converts the most, which campaign has been the most effective, and the landing pages that work.

You can serve them a results page based on real knowledge. You have client data for Yahoo, for Google, for Baidu, for Sensis, and god knows who else. (It just occurred to me that I forgot about Live! Branding issue there for Microsoft me thinks... sorry Bill.)

A company such as Omniture has both sides covered. They have both natural and paid search terms, the searches that closed the deal, the search terms for the sites that provided real relevance to the consumer. If applied properly, they could become the real search player.

Of course, people will scream Google analytics... Please.

SEOMOZ released some data the other day about the real website owners/players in the market. Aside from the Google-owned companies, how many are using Google analytics? Not many, I would suggest.

How many in the next tier down? Not a whole lot of those either, I would have thought.

There may be plenty of holes in the above, but there is also a whole lot of opportunity.