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New Search Engine Cuil Takes Aim At Google
Posted by
timothy
on Mon Jul 28, 2008 05:10 AM
from the shows-promise dept.
from the shows-promise dept.
theodp writes "CNET reports that Cuil (pronounced 'Cool'), a startup founded by the husband-and-wife team of Xift creator Tom Costello and former Google search architect Anna Patterson, is launching a new search engine today that claims to index three times as many Web pages as Google." Running a few searches left me underwhelmed with the content of the results (hitting the next-page button on a search with a listed 62,200,000 results — for "seattle" — got me the unexpected error message "We didn't find any results for 'seattle.'"), but pleased with the actual layout of the results when it worked, so I hope the kinks are worked out. Update 7/28 18:30 GMT by SM: corrected Tom Costello's accreditation, he wasn't a professor at Stanford as the linked story suggests, just did some research there as a grad student. Thanks to the Stanford CS department for pointing this out.
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Tried it (Score:5, Interesting)
Well it sure looks nice, puting pictures along with the results is a cool touch. It's a pity that the usefulness of the returned links is not on par with google.
Re:Tried it (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, and now all I get is "Due to overwhelming interest, our Cuil servers are running a bit hot right now. The search engine is momentarily unavailable as we add more capacity."
Slashdotted. That'll teach them to try to compete with Google, I guess :)
Parent
Re:Tried it (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, and now all I get is "Due to overwhelming interest, our Cuil servers are running a bit hot right now. The search engine is momentarily unavailable as we add more capacity."
That's because the googlebot is crawling them as we speak.
Parent
Re:Tried it (Score:5, Interesting)
Searching for "Bill Clinton" yields the Bill Clinton Wikipedia article as the first result, but with a thumbnail depicting someone else (Thomas Kean?).
http://www.cuil.com/search?q=Bill+Clinton [cuil.com]
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Re:Tried it (Score:5, Interesting)
Makes me distrust the search engine...
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Re:Tried it (Score:5, Funny)
Wheeee!!! I'm a bird!!
http://www.cuil.com/search?q=John%20Larsen [cuil.com]
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Re:Tried it (Score:5, Funny)
tough to find it out this way...
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Re:Tried it (Score:5, Informative)
Must have been fixed amazingly quick. I have no problem using it now... =)
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Re:Tried it (Score:5, Funny)
39,384 results for monkey balls
First result:
Squeezing gently will spin the Monkey Balls briefly in the air, producing a mysterious whistle. Try spinning them from one hand into the other. The higher into the air you spin them, the longer they whistle. (Please be sure no real Monkeys are in the vicinity when trying this trick, they may become disturbed. The Pendulum - Hold one Monkey ball between...
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Re:Tried it (Score:5, Funny)
Working for a school district, i tried doing simple search like " schools" and no search results came back. disappointing. So then, searching for our district USD #, it finally returns some results (i would hope so), but like chalkyj said, they need to do some work with their image algorithm. Next to our junior high website link, i get a picture (looks like a college logo t-shirt) with "Boobs" written on it. Not the kind of results you want parents seeing, then calling the school to get the webmaster fired!
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Re:Tried it (Score:5, Interesting)
i have already tried to contact them (with no luck) about the image next to result "feature"
it has serius issues in my mind.. such as putting the logo's and diagrams for the company i work for as thumbs for links going to our competitors sites.
who ever thought it was a good idea to allow the use of images from site A as thumbs for links to site B made a serious logic flaw - while we arn't the type to sue someone - there is alot out there that will.
and if they don't get it resolved we will have no choice but to make a big deal out of it to protect our brand image along with our material.
i like the UI - the groupings is nice.. but the contetn they have sucks and they have some really stupid flaws
Parent
Re:Tried it (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, and now all I get is "Due to overwhelming interest, our Cuil servers are running a bit hot right now. The search engine is momentarily unavailable as we add more capacity."
Anybody got a link to a mirror?
http://www.thefisks.org/cuil/ [thefisks.org]
Parent
Give it a chance to develop (Score:5, Insightful)
Google has been around for years.
Cuil has only just opened. Already, it is pretty decent.
I for one would love to have options to Google.
Parent
Re:Give it a chance to develop (Score:5, Interesting)
Cuil has only just opened. Already, it is pretty decent.
I disagree. Basic one word searches return no results. I have to change my oil in my car and wanted to search out the best brand to use. Typing in "oil", let alone my original search term, yields nothing.
While I agree it would be great to have a nice alternative to Google, Cuil had better step it up a notch...
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Re:Give it a chance to develop (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Give it a chance to develop (Score:5, Funny)
I for one would love to have options to Google.
http://www.google.com/preferences [google.com]
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Failed already... (Score:5, Insightful)
these guys fell at the first fence. They have to include an explanation of how to pronounce their product name.
That's such a basic mistake it's laughable. If you want to build a global brand, starting with a name people can't remember or pronounce will not help.
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Their real failure was chosing a nonverbable noun. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Give it a chance to develop (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.cuil.com/info/privacy [cuil.com]
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Re:Tried it (Score:5, Informative)
Well it sure looks nice, puting pictures along with the results is a cool touch. It's a pity that the usefulness of the returned links is not on par with google.
Meh. Big deal. GooglePreview [mozilla.org], a Firefox extension, adds thumbnails to every Google and Yahoo result. It's been around for a while.
Parent
Re:Cuil is Irish for knowledge (Score:5, Informative)
Interesting as a fluent Irish speaker I am not familiar with Cuil or CÃil meaning knowledge or wisdom or anything similar. It does however mean curls, a goal (as in sports) or occasionally someone's behind - as it does in many languages. The thing is that leaving an 'i' in it means it would be genitive - not a standalone word but part of a reference or possesive case e.g. cÃl, mo chuid chÃil.
Back to the Irish/Aussie thing, a lot of the words you love and know as Australian are in fact rooted in Irish. Let's not forget that Australia was a prisoner colony and Irish being one of the biggest nuisances to the British Empire at the time, we tended to make up a sizeable portion of the population.
Parent
Some random observations (Score:5, Informative)
A few observations:
* "Cuil" is a really dumb name. "Google" is a dumb name too, but at least its pronounciation is obvious to anyone reading the name. Can't say the same for "Cuil".
* It's unlikely that this new search engine even approaches Google in its comprehensiveness, or ever will
* Cuil has some weird bugs. I searched for my name, found a link to a Gallery page I have about my son's birth earlier this year, and they have a little thumbnail icon next to the search result for that. But it's a random map of the United States completely unrelated to the page it links to. Bizarre.
* Cuil's results come back more slowly than Google's (but this is from New Zealand, maybe it's faster from the USA), and their page re-renders in odd ways (at least on my oldish Firefox install) as results come in.
* Cuil seems to give the most favor to any page that has the word "is" after the search term. Invariably, the first result for almost any single word search will be whatever page starts out with "[Search Term] is ...".
* Google is really bad for Silicon Valley. So many good software developers in SV got sucked in by Google. Too much of the top talent in the area is now working for Google, doing almost completely useless stuff, and it's not healthy for the industry. Is there any software company in the bay area that hasn't had at least a couple of engineers sucked away by Google? Are algorithms for pushing targeted ads and useless web applications that never get out of beta really worth depleting the industry of so many of its best? I predict that when Google comes crashing down (and it will - anyone who has seen the ridiculous excess of the Google campus cannot help but realize this), the net result will have been to set back innovation in the software industry a great deal, by tying up so many people who would otherwise have done something useful.
* For the above reason, I wish Cuil all the success possible, because I'd love to see some actual competition in the search engine world.
Anyway that's how I see it.
Re:Some random observations (Score:5, Interesting)
I have another observation - there doesn't seem to be any localisation to it. That may well come with time (it was a while before Google had it), but being able to go to google.co.uk and specify that it should search for pages from the UK can be extremely helpful, for example when searching for details of public holidays or shops or similar region-specific things.
And yeah, Cuil is a dumb name.
Parent
Re:Some random observations (Score:5, Funny)
* Google is really bad for Silicon Valley. Too much of the top talent in the area is now working for Google, doing almost completely useless stuff, and it's not healthy for the industry. I predict that when Google comes crashing down (and it will - anyone who has seen the ridiculous excess of the Google campus cannot help but realize this)
So I guess they didn't accept your job application, uh?
Parent
Nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
What mechanism will bring about this Google crash? Unlike the famous companies in the .com bubble, Google is actually making money. And lots of it. More than a billion dollars a quarter, to go along with their $12 billion in cash and zero debt.
This is not to say that Google will remain eternally dominant, of course not, but the rules of the game favor the incumbent, especially in a lobbyist economy.
You say Google will come crashing down, yet you also say no one will "ever" be as good in search. So I ask again, what mechanism or event do you foresee in your crystal ball to bring about such an unlikely crash?
Parent
Re:Nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
Well that is a good question. I agree that my statements do seem contradictory. What I think is that the online ad business is going to end up as another bubble; companies are going to wise up and realize that the money they pay for ads on web sites like Google's are not worth nearly as much as they thought, and the trend will be to a large reduction in money spent on ads. And Google will feel a big crunch because of this, and because they've spent so much money on so many frivolous enterprises, and fostered such a lacsidasical corporate culture, they will simply not be able to produce any new products or online services with the capability of recovering their previous levels of revenue. Eventually, they will become marginalized and irrelevant.
My choice of phrase - "crashing down" - is admittedly poor, since this is something that I don't think will happen all at once, but will occur over a period of time, 5 - 8 years or so.
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Re:Nonsense (Score:5, Interesting)
What mechanism will bring about this Google crash? Unlike the famous companies in the .com bubble, Google is actually making money. And lots of it. More than a billion dollars a quarter, to go along with their $12 billion in cash and zero debt.
Google won't crash like the .com hilarities of 2000, but to consider it invincible is a mistake too.
While they expect to drag in $4.8bn this year, they are valued at $152bn. This is equivalent to a gross return on investment of 3.1% - which is not, in my opinion, an encouraging yield. Their advertising revenues (in my opinion) are unlikely to grow significantly - and (as far as I can tell) they've scant other revenue stream developed. In an economic downturn, of course, I'd also expect to see advertising spend slashed... putting even further pressure on share price.
As I see it, the only justification for today's share price is an expectation of spectacular capital growth. I think that game is over. If google returned 10% yield, I think that would be credible... that would decimate their share price - and, in so doing, would foster a complete lack of confidence among investors who would see their speculative gains wiped out. Even $12bn in cash won't keep them up forever - especially considering the size of their wage bill if they are going to stop their to talent jumping ship.
Don't get me wrong, I think Google are awesome, but I do think they are over-valued.
Parent
Oh please... (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't blame Google for using job market and IT industry supply and demand forces to fill whatever positions they need.
Google found a niche, exploited it for all what is worth, and are so efficient at it that they can allow themselves to get the best talent money can buy.
Please grow up, that is how a job market is supposed to work. If the rest of the IT industry can't come with innovative ideas good enough to attract new investment and bright people, it is hardly Google's fault.
When Google comes crashing (yeah, we know, all companies do, thanks for the insight genius) it will be for more important reasons than treating well, even lavishly, their employees.
At the moment it seems to be working, so I really don't see why they should change. I am not saying that all companies should provide whatever Google provides, but I am sure that morale in many companies would be increased immeasurably if they put a few pool tables around and some comfy sofas were to nap or to have a chat.
Most companies forget their employees are human and that it is important to give a degree of human empathy to your employees.
When the bad times come all those extras can be taken away, but to do so at a time when business is brisk is nonsense. It just shows why they are billionaires and some around here are unsatisfied middle managers or angry technicians.
Parent
Re:Oh please... (Score:5, Interesting)
Why the hostility in your post? I get the feeling that you have some kind of personal tie to Google. Maybe you work there?
I knew back in in the '97 - '99 time frame that all of the money being thrown at useless internet companies was going to come back and bite the industry in the end. I'm not looking for any kind of pat on the back here, because obviously alot of people thought the same thing.
I see Google kind of the same way. The stock market has thrown HUGE amounts of money at them. Online advertisers have thrown HUGE amounts of money at them. And I think that soon, this bubble is going to burst too. I feel the same way about Google as I did about the internet stocks of the late '90s. Vastly overrated, built on a business model that is not sustainable (in Google's case, online ads, which I honestly believe are going to tank hugely when advertisers finally realize the true value of online advertisements such as those sold by Google - and it ain't alot in my opinion), and wasting ridiculous sums of money on employee luxuries that only serve to create a complacent and unmotivated work force. And I think the result is going to be the same.
You may disagree with me, which is fine by me. Honestly I don't care enough about your opinions to attack you personally for them.
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Value of online adversing (Score:5, Interesting)
...built on a business model that is not sustainable (in Google's case, online ads, which I honestly believe are going to tank hugely when advertisers finally realize the true value of online advertisements such as those sold by Google - and it ain't alot in my opinion)
Regarding the true value of online adversing... In my case, I can say that the advertising I put onto Google is worth it. I've just enabled the online store at http://www.lillifoot.co.uk/ [lillifoot.co.uk] and started advertising on Google. It's very easy to track the metrics of how much I spend versus how much income it brings in. If the advertising wasn't covering costs, I would be looking elsewhere to spend advertising money.
Parent
pretty, but not yet sooo useful (Score:5, Interesting)
Very interesting result layout (Score:5, Informative)
And I typically got relevant results with little spam, but that may depend on what you are searching for.
"62,200,000 is meaningless" (Score:5, Insightful)
The number of search results does not mean anything, relevance is what is important - if what I want is not in the first 5 pages of search results I assume it doesn't exist (and I expect to find what I want on the first page 95% of the time).
Re:"62,200,000 is meaningless" (Score:5, Insightful)
Cuil's claim to fame is that it indexes more pages than Google, not that it will give you more hits (though you would think that it would). That said, you are right in that it doesn't matter. So what if it is indexing 3x more pages. Are those pages worth indexing? I am really skeptical that a page that Google doesn't index for whatever reason is the page I am after when I search something.
There are only two things that matter when it comes to what happens after you hit the search button, the interface and the results in the first 1-5 pages. The rest is junk. Telling me that I got three trillion hits is like my computer reporting that it took seven billion calculations to open a program. Great. That is a fun fact, but I don't give a shit.
If you want to beat Google, you need something new. Natural language searches, search engines that act as agents continuously looking for things for you, whatever. Doing what Google does but supposedly slightly better just isn't enough. Google already does it good enough for most people. If you want to beat Google, you need to do something innovative that Google doesn't do... and then rest the temptation to not take the dump truck of money they offer you should they recognize you as competition worthy of being bought out.
Parent
Re:"62,200,000 is meaningless" (Score:5, Interesting)
true, however my colleague and I both noticed 1 thing immediately about this search engine:
no f*cking links to shopping comparison sites.
Just because of that, I may come back to it in a month or so, and if it continues to filter those b*st*rds, then I may well just keep using it. That in itself makes it a Google killer IMHO, some searches in Google return a dozen pages of the same kelkoo, pricerunner and dooyoo links.
Parent
Page Count Poor Metric To Compare Sites By? (Score:5, Insightful)
The seattle bug (Score:5, Interesting)
seems to be fixed.
I also tried Tiananmen and was returned a blank face (I'm in China). This is many Chinese people's first benchmark at a new search engine. For me, the result is expected, since the Great Firewall is a hybrid of generic and Google/Yahoo/etc-targeted implementations.
misspelling? (Score:4, Funny)
Not impressed so far (Score:5, Interesting)
The layout is pretty, the related results is nice, but the main function... the results... they suck. I was searching for an uncommon sailboat and there were 0 pages returned. Google returns results for the same query... On other searches, the domain name no longer resolved, there were 404s, I got a page that was last visited in 1997, just junk. The results summary needs to be cleaned up also, lots of funky symbols in the results are just noise.
This is the same reason I stopped using Altavista way back when. I don't buy this 120 billion pages thing. You know you can get every article on slashdot on games.slashdot.org, tech.slashdot.org, politics.slashdot.org, etc... I bet they include all those, and every other site that allows you to view message threads 8 different ways. But no results for my first query!
It could be a while before someone is going to beat google at searching. I really do like the alternative approach to displaying search results, so I will at least keep my eye on it.
Hey, I found a bug. (Score:5, Funny)
We didn't find any results for "cuil pronunciation"
Some reasons might be...
* a typo. Please check your spelling.
* your search includes a term that is very rare. Try to find a more common substitute.
* too many search terms. Please try fewer terms.
Finally, try to think of different words to describe your search.
About Cuil | Your Privacy | Add Cuil to Firefox
---------------------
Well, that sucks...
--
BMO
Invisible... (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a lot of talk about how Google is in decline, and I won't comment on that, because every company has its tipping point. But for them to have been a invaluable (and in many cases incomparable) tool in my life for the best part of a decade and to have remained almost invisible as an agent in that process takes some doing.
In fact, the most insidious thing about Google may well be that any new attempts at reorganizing the layout of a traditional search engine, such as cuil is now attempting, seem like deliberate contrivances. And probably are.
Re:Invisible... (Score:5, Interesting)
I also started on AltaVista way back when it was useful. It was extra good because for a long time, an AltaVista search searched the web and usenet simultaneously, which back then, was a good thing because usenet actually had more content than the web.
I also use Google daily. However, I like to think about how much I value Google by how much I'd be willing to pay for their service. And the answer is, zero. I would just find some other way to find information on the web. How much would you be willing to pay for Google's search service?
Parent
The best for them (Score:5, Insightful)
The best they can hope for anyways would be to be bought by Google. Either that or they'll stagnate due to scalability issues or even suffer a slow death.
Besides, "Search 121,617,892,992 web pages" and none from my website? Allow me to remain sceptical..
No problems? (Score:5, Interesting)
Gone.... (Score:5, Funny)
"former Google search architect Anna Patterson"
Someone's going to sue somebody.
Really only 43,684,588 pages? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why does Cuil claim to have "2,784 results" to my search yet display only one? Does it mean we have to divide the impressive 121,617,892,992 claimed index web pages by 2,784 to obtain the astoundingly round number of 43,684,588? What are the odds that the result of this division would be an integer number?
1 out of 2,784.
Congrads we slashdotted a search engine. (Score:5, Funny)
So is this search engine HOT or NOT?
Very Interesting Privacy Policy (Score:5, Interesting)
Privacy Policy [cuil.com]:
Way to go!
Their spider is awful (Score:5, Insightful)
The first time I encountered Cuil was when I blocked their "twiceler" spider from my site. It was hammering it with thousands of requests for non-existent pages. It seemed it was generating URLs at random. It then ignored the robots.txt for ages.
Cannot sensibly deal with multiple terms (Score:5, Interesting)
On cuili we get:
Google gives much more relevant hits