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Cuil has Google aims but own ideas
July 28, 2008
Despite its Irish roots and Google links, new search engine Cuil cannot say it is feeling lucky today.
Cuil has been down for much of its launch day, presumably from the weight of traffic - a victim of the media hype (including our own story) and perhaps its own hubris.
When we interviewed Tom Costello, the Irish-born founder and chief executive last week , he told us Cuil was going for a full launch on Monday, rather than a gradual one.
That is very un-Google like in its avoidance of long beta testing and the current “Search. We’re working on it” error page suggests the decision may have been a mistake.
If you do manage to load the proper page, there are a number of other un-Google.com features to observe:
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- A drop-down suggestion box as you type your query means a quicker route to your answer and fewer page-views for Cuil - but it has no ads to serve at present.
- A magazine-style three-column layout with pictures and fuller text makes a refreshing change from Google’s list pages.
- Results are not based on popularity or topicality but intrinsic content. “We are offering something that’s more about the content of the page rather than how much traffic it’s getting,” said Mr Costello. This takes some getting used to. Like most people, I prefer to get current, popular results. A vanity search on my name on Google produces my latest blog post, my linkedin profile and my Friendfeed lifestream as three of the first four links. On Cuil, there are no direct links to me, with only two out of 11 links mentioning me in passing. Cuil seems broader and deeper, almost encyclopaedic, but appears very lacking in focus. Having said that, the demo Cuil gave showed a search for “Harry”, which did provide focus in the shape of different tabs for Harry Potter, Harry Truman, Prince Harry etc for disambiguation purposes. However, this has clearly not been fully implemented.
- As Cuil does not care about popularity and therefore what its users are searching for, it does not keep logs. As well as saving a lot of space and processing power, this means it has unimpeachable privacy standards compared to Google, as it has nothing to keep private.
Then of course there is Cuil’s 120bn-page search index, which it claims is three times larger than Google’s and its technology that lets it use just a handful of servers for queries rather than the massed ranks of thousands used by Google per query.
This technology seems to be Cuil’s key advantage. It would have an easier job convincing other search engine companies to buy its cost-saving solution than persuading users to switch from Google, or use Cuil as their main alternative.
However, Mr Costello insisted Cuil was not just a showcase for its back-end technology.
“People need to have bigger ambitions, you have to try to change the world,” he said.
“The Silicon Valley venture capital thing is that it’s easy for people to say ‘Oh, I’ll build something to flip.’
“What we really care about is trying to build something which makes things better for people, which means the whole web is indexed, and if you create value for society, society hopefully will come back and reward you for it.”
Not as succinct as Google’s ‘Don’t Be Evil’ motto, but his comment shows Cuil is at least Google-like in its altruistic aims.
I’ve been using it today and I’m finding it really useful, the results give you a broader view of what you are looking for. Go CUIL!
Posted by: Miguel | July 29th, 2008 at 1:36 am | Report this commentCuil has some great features and shows real promise as a contender to Google. However, they have an even larger problem prioritizing search results. When I run a search for a commercial product, say BMW Motorcycle Parts: http://www.cuil.com/search?q=BMW%20Motorcycle%20Parts&pi=0&sl=long , all I get is page after page of “pointer” sites referring me to parts outlets. This omnipresent referral system that is always being inserted between me and what I am searching for is my biggest gripe about Google’s searches. This is exactly the type of SPAM that Google has valiantly fought in the past and unfortunately, due to conflicts of interest in paid advertising methods, no longer fights. If Cuil can effectively mitigate the amount of index spamming while returning highly relevant searches they will have a winner and I would be more than pleased to send them my adverting money.
Posted by: Gregory Snow | July 29th, 2008 at 11:17 pm | Report this commentI find it hard to accept that Cuil is anything *other than* a showcase. If they’re not tracking personal data, how can they possible establish relationships between this data and make for better personalized search results, targetted advertising, and purchasing recommendations?
I asked 20 people here in Silicon Valley if they thought this “no storage of IP address” stuff was a compelling business proposition or even a matter of personal concern. Not one said it was.
Posted by: Guy Bague | July 30th, 2008 at 5:49 am | Report this comment“This is exactly the type of SPAM that Google has valiantly fought in the past and unfortunately, due to conflicts of interest in paid advertising methods, no longer fights.”
(Disclosure: I’m a software engineer at Google.)
Hi Gregory Snow, I wanted to mention that Google absolutely does continue to fight webspam and low-quality search results in our index. If you want to leave a comment with some example search results, I’d be happy to hear about examples.
Posted by: Matt Cutts | July 30th, 2008 at 5:49 pm | Report this commentI am a memeber of Wombeat and just heard about Cuil yesterday and submitted our popular video and entertainment site www.zoogatv.com to them to crawl. this looks very interesting and they have a different appraoch. so let’s see if they can overcome facing google unlike Ask.com.
Posted by: anthony | July 31st, 2008 at 3:36 pm | Report this commentTime for new (good) search engines challenging Google.
See this one, though of narrow interest (scientists), it is becoming fast popular.
www.Vadlo.com
Posted by: Curtis | August 1st, 2008 at 8:44 pm | Report this commentIt is time for someone to challange Google but I don’t think Cuil is the one to did it yet. Too many teething problems with it. Prehaps the 7th age of computing will change all that.
Posted by: John | August 4th, 2008 at 1:32 pm | Report this commentI just read about the launch of cuil in The Times paper and went ahead and typed in the name our online gift shop in Australia as “brilliant gift box” (it is www.brilliantgiftbox.com.au) The first result was indeed our company but featured an unrelated image?? and the text was definately from yesteryear. other entries included directory style inbound links but again featuring an unrelated (and unflattering) photo! And I can vote on pages! I think I can maybe become a comment author on fatinfo??
Posted by: Sarah Oleary | September 2nd, 2008 at 4:27 pm | Report this commentI just read about the launch of cuil in The Times paper and went ahead and typed in the name our online gift shop in Australia as “brilliant gift box” (it is www.brilliantgiftbox.com.au) The first result was indeed our company but featured an unrelated image?? and the text was definately from yesteryear. other entries included directory style inbound links but again featuring an unrelated (and unflattering) photo! And I can vote on pages! I think I can maybe become a comment author on fatinfo??
Posted by: Sarah Oleary | September 2nd, 2008 at 4:31 pm | Report this comment