When Web-search market-share figures come out, the story has become familiar: Google's numbers go up, while everyone else's fall. But the story changed this month when the newest figures came out from ComScore Networks. Something unthinkable happened in July: Google's share of Web searches dropped a percentage point to 43.7%.

What does this mean? Barry Schwartz at SearchEngineRoundtable picks up the debate, in which some say that the change in Google's market share is statistically insignificant, while others say it's evidence that Google has "topped out." Garrett Rogers of Googling Google is in the latter camp: "When it comes to innovation in search technology, Google has been relatively static for a long time — maybe users are getting bored?"

Rogers points out that Google hasn't introduced many visible innovations into its core Web search engine. Meanwhile, Ask.com has become newly aggressive under Barry Diller's ownership, rolling out "Smart Answers" that help users refine their search until they get the results they're looking for.

And sure enough, the latest numbers show that Ask has been gaining market share at Google's expense. No wonder Google co-founder Larry Page is going nuts about Google engineers who refuse to work on search results projects that they deem "boring."