Technician testing prototype for squeezing data

Fascinating idea, but I think they are wildly underestimating the size needed for the porn websites.

Startup called Webaroo touts ‘Web on a hard drive’

Search the Web from your laptop or handheld — without an Internet connection of any kind?

This seeming impossibility is what a Bellevue, Wash.-based startup called Webaroo has set out to realize — they call it “search unplugged” — and even company president Brad Husick concedes that he found the idea “crazy” at first blush.

Of course, it wasn’t that long ago that a laptop with an 80-gigabyte hard drive seemed crazy, too. But ever-more-monstrous drives are common today and they serve as the foundation upon which Webaroo is basing its free, ad-supported search service. The company and service officially emerge from behind their stealth shield tomorrow armed with a flashy bundling agreement from laptop maker Acer.

…studies show that most people rarely look beyond the first 10 to 20 results returned by a typical search. With Webaroo you’re being returned not just a list of pages, but the pages themselves — with all graphics intact — as well as key live links from those pages and the pages to which they lead. They’re talking roughly 10,000 pages per “Web pack,” or plenty to provide a meaningful search experience for whatever the subject matter at hand, Husick says.