08.04.08
It’s a Cuil World
I’ve been wanting to write my impressions of the next supposed Google-killer-cum-search-site Cuil (pronounced “cool”). The problem is - apparently so did everyone else.
The site was absolutely killed by traffic requests when it officially launched last week. I tried many times over several days to get it to work - but to no avail. Finally, finally, when I was back home over the weekend - the site had recovered sufficiently to give it a whirl.
Initially, it’s a much different experience than the default list of links on Google. The search results are instead put in 3 columns across the page - like a magazine. For each of the links - there is a seemingly random image put next to it - which may or may not have anything to do with the actual search results.
It’s sort of slick - like a magazine - and on the top side of the right hand column (for most searches) Cuil provides an AJAX-powered category box that has related searches by topic (pre categorized by Cuil). For example - if you search for “FJR1300″ (a Yahama motorcycle) - you’ll see a group of other motorcycle manufactureres with sets of keywords.
Clicking on a keyword will basically refine the entered search box by appending those terms. So, if you wanted to search for articles that compared two bikes - it was more likely to show up. They have a black theme at the top and bottom - with prev/next paging controls that work more or less like you expect them to.
Cuil claims to have 3x more pages indexed than Google (140 billion versus 30 billion for Google) - and in fact, it was founded by some ex-Google employees and backed with a cool $33 million in venture capital. There’s no ads (yet), and during my tests - it seemed to search pretty quickly and give reasonable search results.
Whether or not it will become a “Google-killer” is yet to be seen. My gut says no way - but you never know.
I remember a scrappy little up-start company that wanted to take on the biggest search players in the world (Yahoo and AltaVista) and wound up doing a pretty good job. That company? Google.
