SEO Skeptic

For my sins, I'm a chocoholic, so I'm often cruisin' the candy aisles.  And when I'm there I almost always see a new, derivative candy bar that I know is doomed to failure in a few months.  Did the world really need or want a Smarties Bar, or a Terry's Raspberry Orange (though I kind of admire the perverse logic that wants to turn something round into a bar, and an orange into a raspberry)?  Their future relegation to the bargain bin is as clear an indication as any that the answer is no.

I can see the logic at work here.  You have to keep creating new products to be a leader in the marketplace, and to capture a larger proportion of market share - at least that's the pitch doubtlessly made at product development meetings that result in some bizarre, unwanted and unloved chocolate bar.

I'm beginning to get the sense that the search engines are experiencing a similar devolution in product innovation.  That is, they're producing new products or features for the sake of producing new products or features, rather than introducing innovations that really improve usability or provide more relevance to searchers.  Here are two recent examples.
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I just came across posts by both Ask and Live Search bragging how they were 2009 Webware 100 winners.  I decided to take a peak to verify what I guessed, that all the major search engines were on the list.  Here are the award winners in the "Search & Reference Category":
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