Uploaded March 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Back in 2010, I built a deliberately terrible search engine called Speedy Pete's Internet Directory. It looked like something abandoned on the web since 1997, complete with a blinking star-field background, broken banner ads, MIDI-style hold music, and a proud announcement that its "highly-trained search agents" only worked between 9am and 10pm.
The joke was simple: Speedy Pete was meant to be the plucky underdog taking on Google... while being completely useless at the same time. It accidentally became a small part of the Hamish & Andy Show's lore, thanks to the running joke about Speedy Pete being Google's biggest competitor.
In this video, I look back at the original site, how it worked, how I secretly powered it with Google behind the scenes, why it shut down in 2017, and how I've now brought it back to life using AI. Speedy Pete has returned - fully "responsive", still proudly awful, and now armed with his own AI chat bot, Chat G-Pete-T.
This is the story of one of my favourite stupid projects... and the only search engine that closes for the night.
👉 Visit the resurrected site: speedy-pete.com
👉 Try Chat G-Pete-T on the "Chat" page
👉 More of my weird projects: higgypop.com/my-stupid-projects
SUBSCRIBE → higgy.be/higgysub
Official website → higgypop.com
Twitter → twitter.com/higgypop
Facebook → facebook.com/higgypopparanormal
Instagram → instagram.com/higgypopparanormal
Back in 2010, I built a deliberately terrible search engine called Speedy Pete's Internet Directory. It looked like something abandoned on the web since 1997, complete with a blinking star-field background, broken banner ads, MIDI-style hold music, and a proud announcement that its "highly-trained search agents" only worked between 9am and 10pm.
The joke was simple: Speedy Pete was meant to be the plucky underdog taking on Google... while being completely useless at the same time. It accidentally became a small part of the Hamish & Andy Show's lore, thanks to the running joke about Speedy Pete being Google's biggest competitor.
In this video, I look back at the original site, how it worked, how I secretly powered it with Google behind the scenes, why it shut down in 2017, and how I've now brought it back to life using AI. Speedy Pete has returned - fully "responsive", still proudly awful, and now armed with his own AI chat bot, Chat G-Pete-T.
This is the story of one of my favourite stupid projects... and the only search engine that closes for the night.
👉 Visit the resurrected site: speedy-pete.com
👉 Try Chat G-Pete-T on the "Chat" page
👉 More of my weird projects: higgypop.com/my-stupid-projects
SUBSCRIBE → higgy.be/higgysub
Official website → higgypop.com
Twitter → twitter.com/higgypop
Facebook → facebook.com/higgypopparanormal
Instagram → instagram.com/higgypopparanormal
