There are two characteristics of which I believe, that they are true especially well of American:  Courage and the search for challenges. Rich Skrenta has the two qualities. The 42-year-old Skrenta wants to go online with his new search engine blekko.com in probably three months.

He presumably cannot line much up against Google. At least not at the beginning. But that’s not the question for Skrenta. His goal for launch day: That his 200 servers in his colocation in Sunnyvale stand the first rush. Skrenta is courageous because he tries to compete with Google with a relatively small team of 11 people.

Probably over at Google in Mountain View, just 16 miles down the road, they will only tiredly smile over Skrenta and blekko.com. I have met a man in Redwood City, who is deeply convinced by his idea.