This week marked the launch of search engine Cuil (pronounced cool), which has been heralded as a potential serious challenger to search giant Google. Formed by ex-Google engineers, Cuil says that its index of information is based on 120 billion webpages which it claims is three times more than Google uses, although Google still maintains that its indexing is bigger. Google has stopped reporting the number of pages it indexes, making it difficult to substantiate either claim.
Cuil had a rocky launch yesterday, with reports coming out that it was taking over an hour to return a search result. Seeing as this was its first day, there were bound to be teething problems. I decided to give it another chance by searching for "gaj-it" on both Cuil and Google this morning. Cuil reported 477 results, while Google returned 20,300 which is a big difference. Granted quite a few hits on Google's front page weren't really relevant to an ace gadget blog (well that was what I was getting at with this search!) so I tried again using inverted commas. Google's results dropped dramatically to 8,280 but interestingly Cuil's results remained exactly the same at 477. Quality results the first time around perhaps? Even so, the difference in number of hits is enough to warrant questioning over the technology differences between the two.
Technology-wise, Cuil does differ to Google in terms determining search results. Cuil aims to utilise more information on a webpage in determining its hits, rather than just focusing on the number and quality of links to and from a webpage as Google does. The results page is also displayed differently with Cuil opting for a magazine-style layout as opposed to Google's simple listing.
For the security conscious, Cuil does have it over Google, Yahoo and Microsoft in that it will not monitor or keep record of a user's search habits. Cuil claims that by focusing on page content, it does not need the added data that comes from click history, and therefore does not need to store people's search histories.
The minimalist face of Cuil mirrors a similar idea to Google's homepage, but noticeably there are no ad links on it, begging the question as to how Cuil will continue raising revenue. Google's substantial advertising platform allows it to continually increase its level of performance, and quality search results is what the game is ultimately about.
At this stage while it may be a worthy competitor, there is ultimately not much wrong with Google- so why would you stop using it? If you've had a Cuil experience, let us know.
2 thoughts on “Time for Google to Cuil off”
Many have tried and failed and it will be interesting to see what these guys can do. I love Google but competition is healthy and I really feel that Google needs a real competitor.
Google however does have some cool featured coming like the user rating of results (like social networking sites Digg).
In terms of revenue Cuil will no doubt have to come up with something as they won’t be able to run a competitor to Google without some funds. At the moment they have investors http://www.cuil.com/info/investors/
Its will be interesting to see how this pans out and I do like the design very cuil….
I don’t know if Cuill can beat the likes of the big boys like Google. It becoming a force of habit now…whenever I need good quality and fast search results I always use Google…no other search engine will do.