Cool as Cuil can be!!

After journalist and blogging mate Malum Nalu posted a story a couple of days ago on Knol (Google’s replacement for Wikipedia) - I felt compelled to write a short story about another major Internet and technology announcement this past week…

Welcome to Cuil—the world’s biggest search engine. The Internet has grown. We think it’s time search did too.

A story from the website The Search Engine Guide late 2007 described Google as still the most popular search engine…

According to new numbers from a global search survey conducted by comScore, Google is the most popular search engine in the world. In fact, Google handles roughly 60% of world wide search. (37 billion) That number is even higher than the 50% of searches it handles here in the United States. The study looked at global numbers for other engines as well and listed Yahoo (8.5 billion), Baidu (3.3 billion), Microsoft (2.2 billion) and NHN (2 billion) as rounding out the top five.

Cuil was launched only a few days ago (28th of July, 2008) and here’s an excerpt from a Press Release:

Cuil Launches Biggest Search Engine on the Web

Technology Company Offers New Look at Search

MENLO PARK, Calif.—July 28, 2008—Cuil, a technology company pioneering a new approach to search, unveils its innovative search offering, which combines the biggest Web index with content-based relevance methods, results organized by ideas, and complete user privacy. Cuil (www.Cuil.com) has indexed 120 billion Web pages, three times more than any other search engine.

Cuil (pronounced COOL) provides organized and relevant results based on Web page content analysis. The search engine goes beyond today’s search techniques of link analysis and traffic ranking to analyze the context of each page and the concepts behind each query. It then organizes similar search results into groups and sorts them by category.

Cuil gives users a richer display of results and offers organizing features, such as tabs to clarify subjects, images to identify topics and search refining suggestions to help guide users to the results they seek.

“The Web continues to grow at a fantastic rate and other search engines are unable to keep up with it,” said Tom Costello, CEO and co-founder of Cuil. “Our significant breakthroughs in search technology have enabled us to index much more of the Internet, placing nearly the entire Web at the fingertips of every user. In addition, Cuil presents searchers with content-based results, not just popular ones, providing different and more insightful answers that illustrate the vastness and the variety of the Web.”

So if you want to check out a viable alternative to Google, Yahoo or Microsoft then check Cuil the new Internet Search Engine at: http://www.cuil.com/

So what do I think? Will Cuil rock Google? Or will Cuil slowly die a natural death like so many other DotCom startups? Maybe, maybe and maybe…

Or it might just take of! I have taken Cuil for a bit of a test run and although it has over 100 billion pages indexed I’m still not entirely satisfied with what it comes back with. The folks at Cuil probably still have some more indexing and fine tuning to do. For now I give Cuil full marks on presentation and user experience - the content (I believe still needs a little more work).

But folks rest assured of one thing - that imminent quality of this universe that we exist in - change! All hero’s have their days and nothing lasts forever - absolutely nothing - not IBM, not Microsoft, nor the Harbour Bridge in Sydney for that matter! Mt Everest and Planet Earth will one day too be history. Nothing in this world is permanent - absolutely nothing! Not even what some folks refer to as god almighty!! (the buddhist within speaks out).

Yep.. Google is presently king of the Search Engine pack but for how long?

(Interestingly, Cuil currently scores a Google “PageRank: unranked” - its either too early to tell which way the cookie is going to crumble or Google have been stacking the odds against Cuil)

Nuff Cuil talk for one day!!