Source: CEO Randy Adams on Techcrunch;

We haven’t closed the financing. We knew when we started the company that to compete with the likes of Microsoft, Google and Yahoo, it was going to take at least $100 million, half to build the back end across thousands of servers and half to get distribution (maybe more with Microsoft spending $100 million on Bing advertising alone).

What we didn’t plan on was the terrible downturn in the economy which made it impossible to raise another $50 million to get distribution (mainly through toolbar deals). In this economy nobody wants to invest that kind of money in a company that is pre-revenue, even if the net result is potentially a multi-billion dollar company.

Cruvic: I was very sad to see this wonderful search engine up for sale and even worse offline. I used it a lot on my mobile and it was extremely useful. I do hope they find the money in the future or a suitable solution. Unfortunately their loss is someone elses gain and no doubt a company that has lots of cash to burn will take this idea and make it even better.

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Wikipedia: searchme