&gt; Microsoft spends over $1B&#x2F;yr on maintaining and improving Bing. So yeah, search does cost a fortune<p>I doubt that figure, but even if it is true, you&#x27;re <i>still</i> talking about a final product (not a new start up). It&#x27;s a figure that includes things like marketing and insane web traffic. These are things that a new search engine would not have initially.<p>I&#x27;m not saying running a search engine is cheap. It&#x27;s not. But the implication is that it&#x27;s like the pharmaceutical industry where you need billions just to get in the game. It&#x27;s not like that at all. In fact, there have been a few search engines which have tried to get in the game. Search engines like Cuil (anyone remember them?). They may have failed but that doesn&#x27;t mean it&#x27;s impossible. And it certainly doesn&#x27;t take hundreds of millions of dollars to get started.