Google "Caffeine" nearly ready for launch

BEIJING, August 13 (Xinhuanet) -- Google is nearly ready to launch an updated version of its search engine. Nicknamed Google "Caffeine" is still in the testing phase. But the new search engine will improve the speed, accuracy and comprehensiveness of search results according to Google.

The release of Google "Caffeine" may threaten Microsoft's newly released Bing, so says Martin McNulty of the search marketing specialist Trafficbroker. "Google have let Caffeine quietly slip out. It talked about vertical specific searches while quietly doubling the speed and starts introducing real-time results and news feeds," he said. Bing was launched with a massive media budget, but McNulty says, "Bing presents itself as an alternative to something that users are still - for now - happy with."

Google is still the dominant search engine accounting for more than 87 percent of the UK search market in 2008. And in the U.S. Google ended the year with a 63 percent share of all search queries performed. Nonetheless there remains stiff competition. As well as Microsoft's Bing, which is aligned with Yahoo, there are also specialist sites such as the "computational knowledge engine" Wolfram Alpha and a relaunched version of revamped Ask Jeeves.

"Real-time" searching is also becoming more important. Facebook, which recently acquired FriendFeed, has been praised for its "real-time" search engine. And Google founder Larry Page admitted in May that the search giant had fallen behind other services like that of Twitter, which boasts nearly 45 million users worldwide.

Google insists that it "loves competition" and that the new search engine is just part of Google's relentless push to improve its service. "Nobody cares more about search than Google, and I don't think we'll ever stop trying to improve," Google's head of Webspam, Matt Cutts said.