Go into some niche search area. Specific index for specific niche requirement. Like, say, daily deals search engine. Not even generic daily deals but something like daily restaurant deals in San Francisco, California search engine. When you prove concept, expand, get venture capital, get bought by Google or Microsoft, retire on Bahamas. I am serious. Don't listen to naysayers, go for it.
looks like we're getting results from around 8-9seconds now.. that's with 45 bots running... with only 15 bots running it gets to around 7 seconds... which is quite good reallly.. getting better.
Think the problem with it is the DB is taking so long to load results which, averagely. the results are coming around 7-10seconds.. I will be improving this by Monday next week.