Cuil is here. Former Google employees prepare rival search engine

[flashl]

IHT

By Miguel Helft
Published: July 28, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO: In her two years at Google, Anna Patterson helped design and build some of the pillars of the company's search engine, including its large index of Web pages and some of the formulas it uses for ranking search results.

Now, along with her husband, Tom Costello, and a few other Google alumni, she is trying to upstage her former employer.

On Monday, their company, Cuil, is unveiling a search engine that they promise will be more comprehensive than Google's and that they hope will give its users more relevant results.

...

Cuil, pronounced "cool," is only the latest in a long string of start-up companies that have been founded and financed with the goal of competing with Google, as well as Yahoo and Microsoft. (In June, Google accounted for 61.5 percent of search queries in the United States, while Yahoo held 20.9 percent and Microsoft had 9.2 percent, according to comScore.) Some of the most prominent include Powerset, which Microsoft recently bought, and Wikia, which was founded by Jimmy Wales, one of the creators of Wikipedia. So far, none have managed to make a dent in the search market.

[Toucano]

1. Good luck to them.

That name is an issue.

"No it's cool, but it's spelled c-u-i- no, c-u-"

:crazy:

[conspirator]

2. I like that. Going on your own is a necessary step for happiness n/t

[Riddler]

3. Just gave it a try and I really like the way the search results are displayed

in columns with more information instead of the standard display.

[tpsbmam]

4. Me too -- tried it this morning and after trying added

it to my "bookmarks bar" so I remember to start using it regularly. Really liked it.

[Gabi Hayes]

5. Very Cuil, but......

where are the image files?

news?

and no up/down scroll bar

needs work

[Gabi Hayes]

6. and...only one link at a tme?

what's up with that

needs work

[charlie]

7. Lotta work to do

Google whomped the others largely because it produced results that were relevant, and because it was good at filtering porn spam and purely commercial sites (they're slipping on excluding commerce links in the top ranks nowadays).

I put in "bell kevlar bicycle tube" w/o quotes to see what it would do. It kicked up one result, a sales page on a golf supplies site. However, the upper right said "965 results." So, I turned Safe Search off, thinking that might enlarge the number of links displayed. Instead, the same search came back as No Results. The golf merchant was apparently kicked off as "unsafe." I still don't know what happened to the other 964 links. Very odd.

[flashl]

8. So far, like results in tabs and category accordian. Grew weary years ago, with rankings on Google.

[Ezlivin]

9. I did a Google search for it and didn't find anything

Just kidding!

[Liberal In Texas]

10. Just tried it. So far, not impressed.

There is something to be said for having a massive data base like Google has.

The layout is interesting, but I think I'd get tired of it.

[Midlodemocrat]

11. It's got a long way to go to catch Google.

For professional researchers, like me, it's nowhere near Google.

[dysfunctional press]

12. after giving it a try...google has nothing to worry about from cuil.

i am definitely completely unimpressed by it.

[npincus]

13. "cuil" is a dopey name... my opinion, of course.