the list the algo generates proves pagerank is a very good.. Google ftw- I do wonder sometimes how they kept the lead now that most search engines are using similar algos..
Back when Google starting gaining popularity it was an order of magnitude better than anything else (I remember using Dogpile to search a dozen individual engines because they were all so crappy).
I feel like the quality of Google search has declined recently, but for something to usurp Google it will need to be an order of magnitude better to get me to switch again.
Honestly theres much more to web search than page rank.
Stemming (run vs running), synonyms, and other linguistic hackery as well as integration/extension with say Maps (its really convenient to be able to search for say "Starbucks Cupertino" for example).
Search is still moving forward, its just so expensive to make a competitive engine and that the room to improve is getting smaller and smaller.
PageRank is only one of the signals Google computes while ranking pages. From what I have heard, they have more than a few hundred different signals they compute - and are constantly iterating on to keep the search quality up.
