Ha but that was my point. The really good guys prefer to work for companies (and mostly emigrate to America) rather than start their own companies in India.

Guruji can't build a better search engine because they aren't as good as the folks who work on Google's Search Engine.

hint: that (kind of core tech )work doesn't happen in Google Bangalore anyway.

hint2 : look at the bios of Guruji's founders and employees for evidence of significant technical expertise. Compare them to Page and Brin and the others who created the Google search engine :-)).

Someone will outcompete Google some day. It won't be Guruji.

Do you know how hard Google has found it to hire the (very few) people they have in their Bangalore centre in spite of offering astronomical (compared to the rest of the market) salaries? Talk to someone in Goog recuiting for their tale of woe.

I have friends in Goog India and I know what they work on - believe me it is nothing of company shaking importance.

The technical centre of gravity of Google (or Yahoo or Microsoft, or Oracle, or Intel) , especially on the innovation axis (which is what we are discussing here) is well away from the shores of India.

Google hires some 'technical talent' in India sure enough.But do they hire people good enough to create the next killer startup? There is no evidence yet. I'll be glad to be proved wrong.

"I think there are pretty smart people will India who will start it sooner or later it just remains to be seen who it will be."

I agree. But I'd bet on "later". It is not about how smart people are. Given a billion people one would expect quite a few smart people. It is (among other things) about what the culture is like as (you report) Sacca pointed out.