Search has taken a few turns lately:

www.sensis.com.au owned by Telstra:
Yellow pages site: localised search by crawling the web but also citysearch.com.au, whereis.com.au, yellowpages.com.au and whitepages.com.au.

www.ask.com owned by Ask Jeeves:
Save results, limit the number of sites to be searched. No registration required. Desktop search to be released this month (Tukaroo was bought in June).

www.a9.com owned by Amazon.com:
Personalisation by allowing results to be saved. Results from Google (web and images), Amazon (Search inside the book), IMDb (Amazon), GuruNet.com (reference) and also from a user's history, bookmarks and diary. The 'Discover' feature suggests pages based on one's history. Also: registered users receive a 1.57% (or half pi) discount on Amazon. Google AdWords supplies ads.

www.furl.net acquired by LookSmart:
Save search results, that can later be searched and shared.

www.clusty.com owned by Vivisimo:
Meta search, clustering results, tabbing sources. Also localalised search. The 'details' link reveals the searched databases. Using the 'preview' (magnifying glass) link the result is displayed within the results page.

Most scientists seam to agree with Amazon's Udi Manber: "We're in the Wright brothers phase of search technology." Not everybody agrees showever.