Larry and Sergey don’t have to worry too often — and they probably won’t here — but Google is keeping a watchful eye on a small Australian start-up that says it has developed a search engine that outperforms Google. MyLiveSearch, developed by self-taught programmer Rob Gabriel, is set to launch into public beta in the next few weeks.

What gives a lone Aussie the right to challenge global search dominance? Well, Gabriel says his search engine gives better and more relevant results because it is a true “live engine.”

In order to understand the technology behind MyLiveSearch one must understand how search engines currently operate. Google, Yahoo and MSN — the three biggest players in the search game — work by compiling a vast database of Web pages in what’s known as an index. These engines send out what are called “spiders” to crawl the Web and update pages in their indices whilst adding new pages as they go along. While this has been a very successful tactic to date, the fundamental limitation with this technology is that these so-called spiders are unable to keep pace with the rate at which the Web is evolving. Some estimates hold that Google has only indexed about 1/5 of the world’s Web pages.

Enter MyLiveSearch. The user installs a small browser plug-in and search terms get put through Google or other indexed databases. But rather than the results from Google or another engine getting returned to the user, they serve as a starting point along with the user’s bookmarks and other popular web hubs. This is where MyLiveSearch really kicks in, as now it will crawl through hundreds of Web pages connected to those starting points and will return the most relevant results. In addition, MyLiveSearch has the ability to crawl dynamically-generated Web pages, which many engines often have trouble spidering.

“This has the potential to change the way people search the internet,” he said. “Google can’t search every page every day (to build its index). The web is so dynamic and changes so often - MyLiveSearch turns your own computer into a ’super-spider’ to search it in real time.

Clearly he’s onto something big here, as Google representatives have twice made the trek down under to speak with Gabriel about his product. What will be interesting to see is whether Google will make Gabriel a rich man and simply put his product on a shelf, or whether MyLiveSearch will be given a chance to shine so we can see the true effectiveness of Gabriel’s vision. He doesn’t seem to be closed to the idea of getting acquired, as he said “this technology could be snapped onto any of the major search engines and improve them.”

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. But one thing is for sure, I will be all over this product once it gets released into beta.