&gt; Nor could it: those things cost hundreds of millions of dollars per year to run and maintain.<p>I vehemently disagree. The early web crawlers and indexes did not cost hundreds of millions of dollars to run. Granted, there is significantly less web results than there are today, but the cost you&#x27;re referring too is the entirety of google&#x27;s servers. That price tag <i>also</i> includes the cost to host the web traffic of being the number 1 website in the world. You&#x27;re talking a price tag which is indicative of a final product.<p>A new search engine would not have those costs initially, and if managed properly from the very beginning, would be able to scale and cover their bills, remaining profitable up until reaching (and hypothetically) replacing google.