CUIL NOT SO COOL


The debut of “the world’s largest search engine”, Cuil, (pronounced COOL) is perhaps the biggest Ho Hum of the year.

Boasting three times the number of documents Google searches, I decided to review this bold new search engine to see how its algorithms perform.

On a scale of 1-10, it peaks at about a three. A search for the engine itself (Cuil) generates 721,578 results (after a 15 second response time)…. Not one result on the first page made reference to the search engine! Search for the engine on Google and it generates 2,030,000 results in one quarter of a second, chock full of information on the engine. An embarrassment for Cuil at the very least.

Round two … I searched for my own self. Over the top results numbered 655,971 with a confusing display of irrelevant topics on Cuil …. including my obituary!!!! Google’s results returned a respectable 1,290 listings, all relevant.

The display order for Cuil results read left to right, up or down. It’s not easy on the eye and takes a bit more time to scan than do Google results.

While I am no fan of Google’s over eagerness to control the world’s media inventory and relegate agencies to creative bull pens, I do give them credit for developing useful applications that simply work.

Cuil's founders, Anna Patterson Russell Power and Louis Monier are former Google employees, while Tom Costello has worked for IBM and others. Investors and board members that can kiss their investments farewell include Madrone Capital, Greylock Partners, and Tugboat Ventures. Remember folks ….YAHOO! bowed to Google for search. Cuil is one tugboat that should raise the white flag before it begins to take on water
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3 comments:

Unknown said...
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richm29 said...

LOL. Very cool, not cuil! Looks like it's DOA.

Rich

Unknown said...

I agree this is DOA.

I too found it very difficult to scan the search results. They'd be better off sticking to a consise list like google and reveal the "about" info on a mouse hover.

My second search was for 'ad server'". The response: 'We didn’t find any results for “ad server”'
'Some reasons might be...
a typo. Please check your spelling. ' - Rather ironic, considering their search engine is a misspelling of 'cool'.

The same 'ad server' search on Google had 1.5 million hits, and the top result were all relevant.

At this point, I wrote this search engine off. Very unkewl.