[Erwin]

Originally Posted by amykhar

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.

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.