Jul
28

New Search Engine to Compete with Google.

Nate on July 28th, 2008

According to a press release today, there’s a new search engine being launched by some former Googlers that supposedly going to compete with the giant.

A new search engine created by former engineers from Google Inc. launched Sunday night, claiming to cover three times as many Web pages as Google.

Menlo Park-based Cuil Inc. was created by Anna Patterson, her husband, Tom Costello, Russell Power and Louis Monier and is backed by about $33 million in venture funding.

Cuil, pronounced cool, promises not to retain information about its users’ search histories or surfing patterns, unlike Mountain View-based Google (NASDAQ:GOOG).

Patterson worked with Power at Google in 2004 after it bought a previous search index she developed called Recall.

Monier is the former chief technology officer of AltaVista, the search engine Google supplanted in the late 1990s. He also eBay Inc.’s (NASDAQ:EBAY) search engine for its online auction site.

Cuil, which formerly spelled its name with two L’s as Cuill, most recently raised $25 million in April in a round of funding led by Menlo Park-based Madrone Capital Partners.

I think the most interesting part about the post were the comments posted:

(11) Comments
Lisa DeBusk July 28, 2008 10:50AM EST

I was curious and wanted to check Cuil out. I searched for Spam on Google and received 360,000,000 results. I searched for Spam on Cuil and received 0! Biggest waste of $33 million…I gladly would have accepted that amount instead of throwing it away into this useless search engine that well probably last less than a week.
Cal Pom July 28, 2008 10:50AM EST

Also, if you search Cuil, it doesn’t even list itself.
Cal Pom July 28, 2008 10:48AM EST

It works much slower for me, and doesn’t show as many results. (I’m using Firefox)
Adrian Banachek July 28, 2008 10:46AM EST

Why are the images from my web site showing up together with the results of other web sites?

Not Cool!

Arty Smarty July 28, 2008 10:45AM EST

I searched for Cuil and got three links on Google and NO LINKS on Cuil. Hmm…
don perry July 28, 2008 10:42AM EST

Hmmm. Good attempt Wish i had some bucks to fund them myself.
Check out my new site. www.crocusbag.com ebay rival
John Spevacek July 28, 2008 10:40AM EST

How about the subject “rheology” - the study of the flow of materials. Cuil came up empty. Nada. Nothing. Google says it found 1.7 millions pages. I’ll have to take their word on it, but certainly there is no contest here.
Ed Linden July 28, 2008 10:37AM EST

Ditto, 166,992 results for the venerable “OCW”. Don’t forget to turn the lights off in your mom’s basement when you come upstairs there Tinker.
cognit this July 28, 2008 10:33AM EST

Um, no results? I got this from the page on cuil:

166,992 results for orange crowned warbler

Either you folks are PR plants or retards. Or Both.

Mike Farnham July 28, 2008 10:28AM EST

Yeah I just tried it and found no results for my website that showed like 15 pages on Google. I’l pass on this engine until they get it figured out.
Tinker Bar July 28, 2008 10:17AM EST
Singularly unimpressed. Searched for some programming info… Google listed it in the top links, didn’t find it at all in Cuil on the first two pages. Searched for the words “orange crowned warbler” (without the quotes). No results at all!
There may be a way to go, but I find it hard to believe that someone would actually want to compete with “the giant” of search.

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One Response to “New Search Engine to Compete with Google.”

  1. Esther Perry
    August 4th, 2008 at 6:49 pm

    Anyone who knows me should know that I’m a Google fanatic, so when I read this post and the negative reviews of the Cuil search engine, I decided to try it out for myself and expected to be jumping on the anti-Cuil wave.

    Well I just navigated my way over to this site and I have to admit that I kind of liked it. My love of Google has always been fueled by their plainness of search. I think I’m not alone in my dislike of the useless ad gimmicks like the proverbial blow-up gorilla at the used car lot. So when I clicked over to Cuil, I immediately appreciated the lack of flashing and framing on this website . . . in fact, as I began looking for advertisements, I couldn’t find anything; no banners, no links, no superfluous pictures or words, nada. It was plain, easy to absorb, with useful search prompts in the form of tabs and tables that expanded when moused over.

    One thing that I really liked is that results usually include a site image, which I have to admit, really seems handy. Site images or logos often help me identify if I’ve found the right link or not and having them attached directly to the search engine page might just save me a click or two.

    I would agree that this engine is not yet seasoned like Google. It does not yet possess the psychic/blatant-stereotyping powers of Google. I’m guessing the page ranking is still in process and getting the more popular pages to the front of the search list may take some time and clicking . . . all in all though, it seems to have some remarkable edge despite the fact that it’s approaching a super-duper power . . .

    Oh and one last thing . . . I’ve searched a fair amount of the “no results” topics listed above and found the subjects just fine, with plenty of data . . . and not that I don’t love Google’s mass quantity of results, but do we really need 360 million results from any search engine? In fact, any site will limit your viewable results to about 1000 links no matter how many millions of results it has allegedly found.

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