Kim Dotcom's new sharing website Mega got a little closer to resembling its old, closed-down version, Megaupload on Wednesday. Anonymous users launched a search engine that indexes files uploaded on the new sharing service, potentially making it easier to find copyright-protected material.

On Thursday, less than 24 hours after the first news reports of the existence of the third-party engine surfaced, Dotcom blocked it. The engine, called Mega-Search.me, is not available anymore. A message in French on its home page reads (according to a Google Translate translation): "Due to a script developed by Mega to delete all files indexed in Mega-search, the engine is temporarily unavailable. A solution to overcome this problem will be made shortly."

The files on Mega are encrypted so the engine relied on a very simple technique to index files: crowdsourcing. Users were encouraged to submit links and names of the files they had on their Mega clouds. Once you found what you were looking for, you could transfer the file to your own account or download it directly.

It's unclear who made the site, although all signs point to French-speaking people. According to WHOIS, the Internet equivalent of White Pages, the site was registered on Jan. 20, the same day of Mega's launch. Reports of its existence first surfaced on Wednesday and Mega's response came roughly less than a day after the news came out.

Ira Rothken, Dotcom's lawyer, told Wired that Mega has no involvment with the website.

According to The Next Web, most of the files available on Mega-search.me were pirated movies, music, games or software.

Mega's quick response might be a sign that Dotcom's new company is really serious about copyright, and wants to avoid being shut down like Megaupload.

"Kim Dotcom has apologised to users of his new website, Mega, for its "poor service quality."

The opening 24 hours of Kim Dotcom's Mega project have not been good from a reliability standpoint, but in terms of popularity, it has been a huge success.

The new "legal" cloud storage website went live in New Zealand at 6.48 a.m. local time on Sunday, and Dotcom threw a huge launch party at his Coatesville mansion, north of Auckland, to celebrate.

However, Dotcom took to Twitter on Tuesday to say sorry to Mega users who have experienced problems with the website.

"The massive global PR around the Mega launch is simply too big to handle for our startup. I apologise for poor service quality," he tweeted. "We are working 24/7 and expect normal operations within 48 hours. Lesson learned ... No fancy launch event for Megabox."

Dotcom hopes to launch Megabox, a music service, in about six months' time.

But Dotcom was coy about just how many people have registered on Mega.

"If I would tell you how many sign-ups we had since the launch, you wouldn't believe it. I can't believe it. So, I won't tell you," he also tweeted.

At the Mega launch and press conference on Sunday, Dotcom told media and invited guests that more than a million people had visited Mega within 14 hours of the site's launch, and about 500,000 had registered as users.

"What we are offering is a smarter, faster, and more secure way of cloud storage, and we are fully assured by our legal team that we are in compliance with the law," he said.

While the site is currently in beta and is a work-in-progress, concerns have been raised over the security of the Mega site. Users currently have no way to delete an account or change the password given by the user during account creation. That means that if an account is hacked, the user has few options available to keep the hacker out.

When Megaupload's Mega site goes live on Saturday, it'll offer something the competition can only balk at: 50GB of free storage.
"Mega will have very generous limits for free users," Kim Dotcom, the site's legally beleaguered founder, tweeted Thursday. "For example you get 50GB storage for free ;-)"
Dotcom's announcement elicited an outpouring of retweets and good tidings.
"@kimdotcom #Mega is going to kill it!" @CajunTechie tweeted. "I'm totally excited. Stay strong. The enemies of progress will fall!"
@LassanaDiarra_ had this to say: "I love u @KimDotcom."

'It's like time travel'

The tweets didn't stop there.
"I think you will be very happy with the new #Mega," Dotcom effused. "It's like time travel. We'll take you to the future!!!"
Just what it is to be like time travel we don't know, but we can say Mega promises more storage than either Dropbox and Skydrive.
We all get to experience the world changing power that is Mega on Saturday, so stay tuned..!