> Considering how high the bar is, there's all the incentive in the world to try and be Google better than Google, at least the way I look at things.

Goog has ~20 years of patents behind them, and anyone coming up now will have to figure out a way of being 'better' while not infringing on any patent. And/or, they'll need to have enough deep pockets behind them to weather patent infringement suits.