Former Google staff launch Cuil
July 29, 2008 at 8:39 pm
Cuil (pronounced 'Cool') is the latest search engine designed to challenge Google. The internet is littered with search engines that purport to offer something superior to Google, but none of them never have really gained any momentum and ultimately have sunk without trace. So is Cuil any different?
The interesting thing about Cuil is that it was founded by several lead engineers from Google, including Anna Patterson, chief architect of the company's TeraGoogle search index. This must surely help, right? Cuil also claims its search algorithm scans 120 billion web pages - three times the number that Google sifts through.
Cuil's philosophy is also slightly different too. They claim that they search and rank pages based upon their content and relevance and not just popularity, which means just because a piece of data isn't that popular it doesn't mean it is of any less value to user.
Another interesting point to note is Cuil's stance on privacy and browsing habits. They firmly state that they are focused upon analysing the web and its data and not the people searching that data. They apparently collect no data about a person and their habits when searching for information.
This last point for me is most interesting of all. It's certainly an admirable and refreshing approach in times of advanced analytics and tailored advertising models. However, although Cuil has raised $33million it is difficult to imagine Cuil being anything more than a cult search engine for a niche market unless they can successfully develop an advanced and sustainable advertising platform. And if they did develop a successful ad platform, surely it would be impossible to achieve without gathering vast sums of data about its users, which goes against a key philosophy of keeping searching habits private.
Of course, the site only launched yesterday, so it's far too early to tell how effective the search engine is in terms of performance. I'd imagine it will take several months before the application is run in and working anywhere near its potential. However, it will certainly be interesting watching it develop and evolve over the next year.
August 01, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Yeh - I haven’t heard many positive things about cuil.com yet. Apart from a couple of searches when I first heard about it, I haven’t been back.
Then again, I said that about google when I first heard of them, and now I use the site many times per day!
August 01, 2008 at 5:19 pm
I tried searching on Cuil a few days ago and I wasn’t really contented with the search results. I like the interface though but the irrelevant search results make it un"cuil".
August 07, 2008 at 8:11 pm
This is an interesting one, other than the awkward arrangement of results, it’s difficult to understand and how someone would rank or order the information at first glance. I’m not sure how it will compete against giants like Google or Yahoo at this point, but this is the begining. Images doesn’t really add any true value, and if anything may cause clutter.
August 11, 2008 at 9:03 am
Hi,
Nice post here, I am the same, I am unsure how we are all going to indexed on there as yet, and with that in mind I can’t see it takeing over the huge search engine that is google.
May I also add, what a great blog/portfolio you have here, you are very talented, keep it up.
Craig
June 20, 2009 at 11:44 am
I seriously don’t think Cuil has a chance. Granted, I think competition is a wonderful thing and I think it would be very healthy for Google to have competition. 640-553 Last year I was banking on Ask.com. Later on this year, I was banking on Yahoo. In your post you mention that Yahoo will outsource search to Google, I totally must have missed that… when did this info get released?
Harry Roberts wrote:
August 01, 2008 at 9:39 am
Their site was down for a lot of its opening day, the images are searched for in parallel to the web stuff so thumbnails *don’t* match the web results and Culi.com instead of Cuil.com = porn!
A pretty uncuil effort thus far…