So it seems that as Yahoo has acquired or de facto acquired Inktomi, AltaVista, FAST and Overture in order to compete against Google, Microsoft is building search in-house.

Google has the brand and focus, Yahoo has the community and customers for value-add extras and Microsoft have the ability to easily combine web and desktop/intranet full-text search. But where have AOL been in all this? AOL is looking increasingly vulnerable with no visible plan for search and a dial-up service that looks expensive when compared to broadband.