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Portal Google's results, with your own google adwords for revenue.
Give out trinkets to increase the adword view counts.
Make an 'affiliates program' similar to the freeiPods.com thing to spread the word.
Not half bad, if you ask me.

Does this remind anyone of Blingo? It's practically the same thing, but using google, I believe.

OK, I've exaggerated a little bit since this isn't a Google-sponsored thing, but Blingo provides prizes for using them as your search engine (and the search engine is of course run through Google).

Now if you'll excuse me, I've just gotten the facts and need to convert my server that I've been running on Linux the past year or so for absolutely nothing to Windows Server 2003, since it's less expensive in the long run ;-)

They're not being sneaky about how the site applies to US residents only. It's not buried in the terms of service. It's right there in bold on the signup page (http://www.blingo.com/signup) and in the FAQ (http://www.blingo.com/about) and in the blog (http://www.blingo.com/blog/archives/2005/07/when_ is_blingo.html).

They're not being sneaky about how the site applies to US residents only. It's not buried in the terms of service. It's right there in bold on the signup page (http://www.blingo.com/signup) and in the FAQ (http://www.blingo.com/about) and in the blog (http://www.blingo.com/blog/archives/2005/07/when_ is_blingo.html).

They're not being sneaky about how the site applies to US residents only. It's not buried in the terms of service. It's right there in bold on the signup page (http://www.blingo.com/signup) and in the FAQ (http://www.blingo.com/about) and in the blog (http://www.blingo.com/blog/archives/2005/07/when_ is_blingo.html).

Yep, I've been using Blingo since last November. Have already won 3 $10 iTunes Gift Certificates (though one of them I won through my referral).

http://www.krunk4ever.com/blog/?p=5

There are some caveats. Only your 1st 10 searches per day qualify for a win. For someone like me, that makes those 10 searches within the hour it strucks past midnight, it doesn't really give me any advantage to continue using Blingo after my initial 10 searches. Also, as more people join, the # of prizes and the frequency of the prizes given out doesn't increase, so the chances of winning decreases everytime someone new joins (unless they join under you).

They do have a toolbar for IE and a search bar engine for Firefox:
http://www.blingo.com/howto

That said, they don't exactly have the same results as Googles, even though it's powered by Google. Often times the results are the same, but sometimes when I can't find stuff through Blingo, I can still use Google to find it. I wonder if that's a thing with Google, where search engines using them get 2 week old results, while searches on Google get the newest ones.

How can Blingo afford to give away prizes?

Just like other popular search engines, we earn money from the sponsored links you see when you do a search. (These links are always clearly identified and separated from search results.) Prizes are simply our way of encouraging people to use Blingo to search the Web.

http://www.blingo.com/ Lots of my friends and people who I've heard from have won from Blingo. No spyware, not too many adds. Just a google search with a win every so often. Seems to work for them.