first things first...am i the only person who wants to keep saying "kweel" and not "cool"?? in terms of the site itself, i am sort of liking the design / layout of the search, although like agotterer said, it still needs a lot of work -- from what i can tell, popular search terms have pretty darn good results but unpopular search terms return sub-par results (see his example haha)... in terms of a threat to google??…
It's really cool to see someone branching off and trying something like search, and I actually support Patterson's efforts. But there is a lot more to Google than just their search algorithm technology. They're running with the momentum of the brand, not to mention the massive collection of apps that people loyally follow.
Can you build a better search algorithm than Google that runs faster, with fewer computers, and containing more indeces? Possibly. I happen to know a lot of people who can cook a better cheeseburger than McDonald's, but that doesn't really get you "all the way." Google has criticisms, such as the search logging, which could be used for leverage and could make for easy user acquisitions. However, when you have HappyCamper1 who is (UsingGoogleSearch && UsingGmail), they'll most likely need a better reason to switch search engines because they're already using an e-mail service by the same company.
The important thing is that she gets into this space and attacks it vigorously. No king rules forever. May the best win.