Not heard of Cuil? (pronounced “cool” - apparently)…
A bunch of people who left google, decided that what Google can do, they can do better. When I first heard about this I thought it was a great idea and perhaps they could add some really long-awaited improvements.
Some of this functionality includes images and media to add context to search results (arguably useful). Unfortunately, cuil served up it’s users with a bunch of adult images (with absolutely no relevance to the search results). The following link (provided by theregister) is not safe for work - Cuil NSFW. It doesn’t strike me as the best way to launch a new search engine - or perhaps it is, as everyone is talking about it.
The question this poses for me…is there a need for another major search engine? Cuil must either feel that there is a market for non-google users or that they can tempt people away from Google by showing images in results?! Now, Cuil say that they index more documents than Google - who of course disagree.
Are more documents better? For me, I would rather have a restricted search engine which only provides quality content but this is an unrealistic expectation. I view it like cable TV, I may have 400 channels but I can only watch one at a time and the more channels there are, the more complete rubbish is on at once. So take a look at Cuil - they promise to have now fixed their database.
I do love the look of it, the layout and design is both functional and appealing. The format of the results makes much more sense to me than a linear list. You can choose between a 2 and 3 column layout that shows you more within the window space (especially on a large monitor). It going to replace my use of Google? Probably not! Am I likely to use it? Probably! Should you? Take a look and let me know.
August 10th, 2008 at 11:45 am
[...] in our article “That is so not Cuil” we showed how a bunch of ex-Google employees got together to produce “Cuil” [...]