A new rival to Google is born. They called it Cuil, but it is pronounced "cool". I have to say the name sucks. If it is pronounced "cool" why not call it cool? Or something else.
Oh right, because you were being clever and Cuil is an old Irish word for knowledge. Got it. And while that gives me a slight warm and fuzzy feeling (oh wait I can hear traditional Irish music in the background - mine's a Guinness dude) we don't speak Irish so that goes over our heads and really you have to do better (I think) and come up with a word that has half a chance of rolling off of the tongue (oh yeah not to mention the small problem that should you miss type the URL as as Culi.com you get Italian porn...so I'm told). Sorry to break it to the Cuil guys, but that is a first hurdle stumbler. Will they make it to the next fence? Difficult to tell, the name I think is a big problem, which is a shame because it sounds like they have created a powerful search engine. I just Cuil'd myself. It gave me 664 results, compared with 58,000 on Google, but to be honest the first couple of pages of results all look similar.
I have to say I do like the look of the interface, but sadly that didn't help Cuil get off to a good start. One IT blogger Chris Brogan's gave it the big thumbs down after waiting two hours for Cuil to return two results for his name.
"I just tried out Cuil, which is supposed to be amazing and better search engine, and what not (that’s what they told Mike Arrington). But it didn’t work for me. I searched on “Chris Brogan” and found all kinds of relevant info, including random pictures not related to the text results beside the search, and none of them my main URL. I searched on “chrisbrogan.com” and it couldn’t find my URL.
Like I said it did OK for me and I will give it a run and see how it goes. In the wider world, I'm not sure there is enough about this search engine that will make it climb too far above the parapet without losing its head. The truth is Silicon Valley is like the boulevard of broken search dreams. A lot of companies, a lot of cash and all gone.
Pass the Kool Aid.
Will Cuil make it? Vote in our poll.
Gave it a go after all the impressive press (... a search engine to rival google...etc..) - somehow it managed to find everything APART from what I wanted - they were was always the 1st or 2nd result on Google so not anything to obsure?
Does Cuil have an amazing different set of priorities and criteria when listen results from every other search engine...(will this throw mean a change for SEO?)... or is it just crap?
With some frustrating experience, and to cut 'em a smidge of slack, I rather suspect cool.com might have gone already, along with all the other possibles...kewl.com, etc? Plus, of course, knol. Then there's what 'cool', however spelled in whatever to sound like surfer-slang, has to do with, like, searching for stuff, dude? I guess I'm just so like web-2.0, which is, like so last night.
Still, it's another for my bookmark when I fancy a rummage beyond the G-spot that is like, why go anywhere else, man, so really, who gives a hoot:)
KEWL used to be ubercool until it was a Footballers name and got its knees dirty
The Oyerish ting will only really work amongst those 5th generation Plastic paddies in Places like Boston Mass
Oh and Plastic Paddies have paper children
Slainte
Sean ( John )
Despite the pedigree of the people involved with the project, I am completely unimpressed. At least for now, it sucks.
After being in super stealth mode and reading about them on TechCrunch for months on end, they crashed due to traffic following the PR blitz and public launch. Not a good start, but almost forgivable. Lots of young companies have this problem.
However, once I was able to test the service, it was horrible. Their results sets are crap and incomplete. There are often random images associated with search results that have no bearing whatsoever on the terms. It is unusable. It delivers no value.
Perhaps the best one is that a search for "cuil" doesn't even pull up their own site: www.cuil.com/search
Google killer? Hardly.
Gordon Macmillan
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