> I doubt that someone doing what you described over a few months or year could make a search engine that anyone wanted to use.

Dunno, not only are people sending me money to develop my search engine, not enough to live off but still, I also get emails and tweets from people who say they love it almost on a weekly basis.

I think attempting to be as comprehensive (or more) than Google is a trap. The better move is to fly under them. Be cheaper and better at something. Recipes is a great example of something Google is just miserable at, that is easy to do much better. There's plenty of such niches.