Google is 10 years old this weekend (the exact date is debated). In these 10 years the search engine has developed from a search tool only known to geeks to a multinational giant.

Google has become one of the most well known brands on the globe, and is — at least in the Western world — delivering close to 70 percent of all search results.

That this would happen was not at all obvious in 1998, where the technological front was defined by AltaVista, a search engine that is now reduced to an experimental front for the Yahoo! search engine.

Search engines like Excite, Lycos and AlltheWeb have also been reduced to delivering data from other search engines.

What made the main difference was the Google Pagerank algorithm.

Inspired by the citation system in academia (a large number of citations indicates that a research paper is good and relevant), founders Page and Brin decided to use the number and quality of links in their search engine algorithm. It worked!

Google’s main problem at 10 is that their algorithm, although immensely improved, is till based on the same technology. There has been no radical innovations in the field for 10 years.

Google’s main fear is therefore that someone will come up with an idea equally brilliant and turn Google into the next AltaVista.

We heard one Google representative argue that they did not believe their current competitors would manage to do so. We believe he is right. Neither Yahoo or Microsoft thinks much out of the box these days.

No, the representative said, what Google fears is another couple of students sitting somewhere in California, starting a new company in a garage. Which is why, he continued, Google is trying to buy so many of them before they become a threat.

Hm, the company is 10 years old and has already reached its mid-life crisis?

Hopefully Google will be able to absorb and make use of the competences they acquire that way.

Now, there was another search site that was launched in 1998. It was called Pandia. Time flies when you are having fun!

Ok, here are some other search engine related headlines from around the web:

• Google: The Ten Years Stories

  Google turns 10 years old, according to most estimates, this weekend. Here are some stories. (Battelle Sep 4 2008)

• Google Finally Opens For WebPosition Gold and Other Ranking Checking Softwares!

  WebPosition Gold is now back online in Google and so are other rank checking tools. (PageTraffic Sep 4 2008)

• Google Chrome- Is It The End to Google Toolbar PageRank?

  You cannot use the Google Toolbar with Google’s new browser (PageTraffic Sep 4 2008)

• Google Bullies Twitter Into Adding Nofollow

  I’ve decided to add my disdain to Google’s request to Twitter to add a nofollow to links contained within the bio section of user profiles. (Andy Beal Sep 5 2008)

• Google Says Private Registration Won’t Hurt Your Search Rankings

  The Private Domain Registration & Google Dilemma – Is it A Boon Or A Bane? (PageTraffick Blog Sep 6 2008)

• Google Says: We’ll Get Our Own Data, Thanks

  Google launches its own satellite (John Battelle Sep 6 2008)

• Easy Search Live

  Phil Bradley takes a look at a new search engine (Sep 2 2008)

• Searching with Google Chrome

  The search tools in the Google Chrome browser are hidden (Phil Bradley Sep 3 2008)

• Google does not want rights to things you do using Chrome

  After reading through the Chrome Terms of Service, some people are worried that Google is trying to assert rights on everything that you do on Chrome. (Matt Cutts tries to put things right Sep 3 2008)

• TinEye: Image Search

  TinEye is the first image search engine on the web to use image identification technology. (BeyondSearch Sep 5)

• Early Success of Quintura Site Search Rewarded With New Funding

  Visualisation search engine gets new funding (Quintura Blog Sep 5 2008)

• Preventing paranoia: when does Google Chrome talk to Google.com?

  If you’re just surfing around the web and clicking on links, that information does not go to google.com (Matt Cutts Sep 2 2008)

• Google’s Chrome: Give Me More

  I am frustratingly in love (more on this later) with Chrome’s ability to search a complete index of pages I’ve visited, not just the meta page headers and URLs. (Ken Hardin Sep 3 2008)