Here’s a nice Zen question for you: is Google a search engine or a technology?

Weird question, huh? Isn’t Google just a search engine? Doesn’t it provide the ability to search several different data collections? Or is it more? Isn’t it a technology that other people can apply to their own search purposes?

Thanks to the Google API and good old-fashioned ingenuity, it’s easy for third-party developers to take Google’s technology and develop them into applications that have nothing to do with Google outside of the application of their technology.