The team is impressive, they've been involved in AltaVista, Google, and Ebay. And Anna seems pretty confident that Google isn't going to change, although one of the lead Google engineers came to speak at our school last semester and said that they change the algorithms hundreds of times each year. He said it's not uncommon that they tweak it several times a week. Maybe it's not going through drastic changes, and maybe it doesn't look like a Yahoo portal, but they do continue to improve their algorithms.
It's really cool to see someone branching off and trying something like search, and I actually support Patterson's efforts. But there is a lot more to Google than just their search algorithm technology. They're running with the momentum of the brand, not to mention the massive collection of apps that people loyally follow.
Can you build a better search algorithm than Google that runs faster, with fewer computers, and containing more indeces? Possibly. I happen to know a lot of people who can cook a better cheeseburger than McDonald's, but that doesn't really get you "all the way." Google has criticisms, such as the search logging, which could be used for leverage and could make for easy user acquisitions. However, when you have HappyCamper1 who is (UsingGoogleSearch && UsingGmail), they'll most likely need a better reason to switch search engines because they're already using an e-mail service by the same company.
The important thing is that she gets into this space and attacks it vigorously. No king rules forever. May the best win.