I doubt that it is a lack of "seriousness" which is keeping Bing, Blekko, DDG, et al. from providing competition to Google. It feels to me that the theme of this year for me has been "the network effect," because it just keeps reappearing in my life.

Further, the very fact that those other search engines exist is cause for you to take your advertising absorption orbs away from Google if you disagree with their business practices. Voting with your dollars is the basis of the free-market economy, as I understand.