Welcome to JavaRanch.
No company works on search algorithms exclusively, so there's plenty of other work to do. And even if they did, I doubt that someone new at the company would be working on that. But this kind of company tends to be sought after by developers, so if "complex algorithms" isn't your style, then there are probably other candidates who are more desirable from a company perspective, because the problems faced by these companies are certainly complex.
You might find Andrew Monkhouse' post in
this thread interesting.
[ July 24, 2007: Message edited by: Ulf Dittmer ]