a new search engine?
 

My friend and I have the idea to start a new search engine and email account site. So far the name we have been thinking most on is "Wowdoo". My friend is an experienced coder and is quite good eith things like this. However, i myself have some questions.

First off, i know that if we do the thing with the email accounts we will need a hella lot of space. Am i correct? and if so, how much?

Also, once we start getting alot of people comming and alot of traffic we will neded more bandwith. How much do you guys suggest?

As far as the emailing and search engine system is concerened, we pretty much have that covered. However, another thing we wanted to do is that gaming thing they have on yahoo in which you can play games against actualy people in a chat and stuff. How difficult is this? And do any of you guys know how to do it?

I myself will be helping most with the search engine and emailing system considering i am quite familiar with this. However, as far as all these other little things are concerned. Im just glad i have a friend that's good at coding and a bunch of coders who can support me from vb.com.

oh and my last question is for the future so i can start looking into it. Depending on how good we do, and if we do REAL REAL good then we might just go and try to make an instant messaging system. Now i know this is VERY difficult probably, my friend has some knowledge i believe. But eeeemmm How hard is this exactly and do any of you guys have experience with this?

What you have described is the kind of project that'll take a team of developers several years to accomplish.

yup

which is why i am looking for a team who is willing to invest his/her time an dedication to make a succesful site/business

My question to you is, why do you want to do this?

My question to you is, why not? ;]

Well first of all, you'll be completing with the worlds biggest organization which is about to integrate it's online search into it's future OS. Secondly the biggest search engine online offers more than you could possibly offer. Thirdly, why would anyone use your search engine when they can use google, yahoo, altavista, msn, dogpile etc which provide a better service?

And finally, gmail, spymac and many others (even hotmail) are offering large amounts of storage space and great features with their email service, which you couldn't possibly compete with.

You're going to have more than an uphill battle to make a success of a project like this I'm afraid. Even with some of the best marketers in the world on your side, you'd have to have some amazing programmers and also a large financial backing to sustain something like that :)

o ok,, uuummm now that you guys have shared your criticism, care to give me some advice and answers?

Find someone with a few billion dollars to back you then try :)

here we go again, so much for someone trying to do big things

anyone care to keep criticising?

Sure, I'll join in with this comment. If you have to ask the questions, you probably aren't ready to do the project. ;)

A search engine would require a ton of bandwidth and thousands of gigs of drive space to compete with the others. You will need an entire room full of servers to hold the search index alone.

Just make the stuff works first, then re-calculate some factors that you're looking for right now as your service's running, just to be sure you won't waste your investment too much :wink:

I agree, if you have to ask, then you should start by answering those questions by doing research yourself instead of asking others on a message board. :)

I can tell you that Google has a few thousand servers running their search engine. ;) I can't remember the exact number.

As for Instant Messaging, there are a few open source ones out there like Jabba which are easy to install and customize - but plenty of people have done that already.

The competition in search engines are stiff - even big players have tried it and gone.

The same goes for webmail - to distinguish themselves people are offering large amounts of hard drive space.

If you want to just "play around", you can start your own search engine, webmail and IM within 2 hours. :) But if you want to be serious, we are talking 90% advertising and promotion - marketing is key, and you need money to advertise. Start small first - never over-invest in hardware you don't need - many companies have gone bankrupt by spending half a million bucks on hardware to realize they are not getting the visitors that require it. So start small, always have hardware that is just enough, and advertise heaps. :)

finally, someone who can actually, help me


Well i am quie serious about this and understand that money and dedication would have to be put in. My friend and I are looking for a good team to put together if by any chance anyone is interested?

lets just say your trying to climb a hill that is completely vertical with no tools or means of climbing what so ever;)

i have a means of climbing, i want to make a succesful site that will soon be home to millions

as for tools, i am going to put together a good team and give it 100%, if it doesnt work.....well atleast i can say i tried eh?

Gio - let me make it clear that I'm not trying to crush your idea here. I'm trying to be constructive about this and give you some advice. As has been said by several people here it's a monster task. It's like me coming into computing class tomorrow, gathering a few of my friends and saying, ok let's program an operating system. These sites like google and such started out when there was a niche, there was a need for search engines. The internet was a relatively new place and they didn't have to deal with incredibly tough competition. Right now, you're coming into a market which is near impossible to enter. Google has thousands of employees world-wide and I'd estimate that they have well over a thousand developers. This kind of project cannot be achieved by a few people as your implying by asking here. It's the kind of project that will take a hundred developers several years. Also these companies operate in offices and efficient working environments. The internet (typically) is not a great environment for developement of large software.

Hopefully you'll take this into consideration when thinking this through, and best of luck with your plan :)

o ok now i completely understand and appreciate your constuctive criticism, im just trying to do something that will have a good (positive) impact on the net, and thats all i can think of right now!!!