To state that "few are even bothering to challenge [Google] anymore is to misunderstand the nature of Google's competition. This competition isn't Bing, DuckDuckGo, or any other generalized search engine, it's search engines that focus on the most lucrative niches. It's Amazon -- it was fairly recently that Amazon moved ahead of Google in the number of product-related searches originating on its site. It's Yelp, TripAdvisor, and WebMD, and there will be others. You don't need all of Google's search traffic to beat it -- a large chunk of it doesn't make any money -- just the part that pays.