OK så vi kan hitta så gott som vad vi vill i Google, behövs det verkligen fler sökmaskiner?

Svaret är ett rungande JA, för webbsök är endast i sin tidiga linda. Antag t.ex. att vi letar efter en viss person eller en viss slags person. Spock är ett nytt startupföretag i Menlo Park här i Silicon Valley som hoppas kunna slå Google just i personsök.

Matt Marshall skriver i VentureBeat hur Spock fungerar: Spock offers an ambitious “people” search engine

If you type in “actress,” Spock returns results like Google — with listings down a page. In this case, the first entry is Felicity Huffman, who Spock’s engine finds as the most relevant for “actress.” (Now, if you type in “actress” into Google, you’ll see why Spock has a chance; there are few actresses in the results, except for the annoying site ActressArchives at the top). Moreover, as both Spock and LinkedIn make their profiles more popular, these will rank higher in Google’s results anyway.

Vad som gör Spock intressant är att den kombinerar sök med taggar så att läsare själva kan tagga sökresultaten. En blandning av Digg och sök alltså.

Liksom Google hoppas Spock kunna tjäna pengar på webbreklam och man har fått riskkapital från Clearstone Venture Partners.

Trots att Spock ännu endast är i begränsad Beta så har företaget fått stor uppmärksamhet och BusinessWeek har en osignerad artikel om företaget: Searching For John Q. Public

Spock is one of dozens of niche search companies trying to capture some of the more than $60 billion that is projected to be spent on search marketing over the next four years. Bhatti wants Spock to become the site you visit to find details on a particular individual. “Searching for people in a general search engine is like trying to look for a needle in a haystack,” says Bhatti, Spock’s co-founder.

Specialization may be the only viable strategy for search startups. Google’s lead in general search seems insurmountable. Nearly 50% of all searches are done on Google, according to June figures from market researcher comScore (SCOR ). Its share has remained high despite competition from Yahoo! (YHOO ) (25.1% of searches) and Microsoft (MSFT ) (13.2%).

… In personal search, however, there is no clear victor. Startups include Wink, which is similar to Spock, and ZoomInfo, a search engine specializing in executives. They’re gunning for the roughly 30% of the 7 billion-plus Web searches performed in the U.S. each month that relate to individuals. About half of those queries concern celebrities. The other half target names that don’t have a million Web mentions: business contacts, former friends, ex-lovers, and the like.