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New Search Engine - Snap - wishes to compete with Google

We feel there is so much more innovation that can take place in search, Snap creator Bill Gross said today. "It`s hard to say that little Snap will ever beat Google, but I think we can become a viable alternative."

As Snap gears up to shift out of test phase, the search engine`s parent company - Pasadena-based Perfect Market Technologies - has raised $10 million in a venture capital round led by Mayfield, a Menlo Park firm. Google, Yahoo! and other search engines make money by distributing sponsored web links that are tied to a search query or the content displayed on a page. Advertisers pay commissions whenever the commercial links are clicked on, even if the traffic doesn`t result in a sale. Snap faces a long haul ahead. Google handled 1.8 billion US search requests last month, giving it a 36.9 per cent share of the market, according to comScore Networks. Yahoo! ranked second with 1.5 billion US searches, or 30.4 per cent of the market. As of Monday, Snap had processed just 16.4 million search requests since its site debuted nine months ago.

Other entrepreneurs also are trying to improve upon ideas they conceived years ago. For example, the co-founders of online price and shopping comparison site My Simon are taking another stab at the niche. Michael Yang and Yeogirl Yun recently raised $7.2 million in venture capital to back Become, a search engine that pulls together product reviews and prices.