Building a search engine to rival Google could cost billions — and that’s not the only problem

The servers for the Gigablast website occupy a windowless brick building on Bogan Avenue in Albuquerque, New Mexico, just off the interstate and near pawn shops and discount tyre dealers.

“It’s Bogan Avenue. You’re Australian, you’ll get the joke,” said Matt Wells, founder and sole employee of the search engine

Gigablast is now mostly forgotten, but there was once a time, around the turn of the millennium, when it could be mentioned in the same breath as another option: Google.

Google has risen to dominate the world, while a spare room at Gigablast has been rented out to a local childcare service.

The website, tongue-in-cheek titled “the last search engine”, appears like a relic of the noughties with its basic HTML landing page and…