They have to. Some really talented engineers could re-imagine google search fairly easily. At this point, they have to pay them not to jump ship and become competitors. Google was both "the search engine" and "the best search engine". They are rapidly becoming a shopping site and "karma whores" have gamed their ranking algorithms. What you are looking for is no longer in the top 3 google results. I wouldn't be surprised if facebook or Apple took a run an their core business.