Google steps it up in attempt to increase its hold on the Internet with Google Search Engine. A tool that allows you to customize a search engine and place on your website. You control what sites the engine will search- you can enter sites you would like it search and can also add more sites on the fly while surfing with its Google Marker.

You can also opt in to allow others to add a relevant site to the engine, called "Collaboration"- you can invite up to 100 members to contribute.

Of course, you need a Google account to sign-up for all of this. Can it be that Google is not just offering a helpful hand to the webmaster or are they thinking of all those nicely targeted AdWords ads and the money generated from them? What better way to reach an audience when you have a webmaster selecting say, sites relevant to new moms and having formula and baby toys ads appear in the search results. In effect Google is having a webmaster again do its marketing for them- hand delivering potential customers to their advertisers.

I don't have a problem with this- but Google disguising it as way to "help" webmasters annoys me. They should offer a financial incentive to webmasters that place the tool on their sites- similar to AdSense. The tool could easily be linked to an AdSense account- I suspect initially this may have been there thinking. Instead they chose to cash in.

Am I being too cynical? Is this a tool you would happily place on your site? Does it indeed add enough value?