Competing with Google is Cuil

CNET is reporting that ex-Googlers are out to beat their alma mater with a new web search engine, Cuil. A quick review of Cuil reveals that it is slow, redundant (meaning, it displays the same pages over and over rather than an array of different pages), and makes weird associations (It has an old picture for me next to pages that have never had that picture on them).

But that's not the point. The thing that I love about Cuil is that it exists in the first place. Silicon Valley may have its problems, but it thankfully retains the Oedipal urge to kill one's father.

Cuil may not be fully baked just yet, but thankfully its team - which includes the husband-and-wife team of Stanford professor Tom Costello and former Google search architect Anna Patterson - is free to improve it. California's non-compete law (Non-competes are banned) and Silicon Valley's ambition make Cuil possible. Anywhere else and Costello and Patterson would have been sued by now.

So, Cuil may well end up failing utterly to beat Google (something which it claims it already has done in terms of technology). The point is that it can try, which is more than most states will allow. Perhaps this is just one big reason that California leads in the technology market?

[PACSferret]

Apparently they've raised $33M to produce more relevant results. Wow has the Valley gone mad? Just to test I tried cuil-ing "open source ris" (ris:radiology information system). Page 1 included this:

"The RIS Varro was a Griffin-class Romulan starship in Imperial Star Navy service in the 24th century."

This page is under development.

[Matt Asay]

Yes, I wasn't very impressed by its results. It may be indexing much more of the web but it doesn't seem to have figured out how to make results relevant.

[jrepenning]

"How to make results relevant"? I'm having trouble making it produce results at all! I've been doing all my searches in Google and Cuil, side by side, but around half the time Cuil comes up dry. Maybe the Cuil query syntax is different? Have to re-read that help page ... oh, wait, there doesn't seem to be one.

Not yet ready for prime time, I guess.

[theburningsoul007]

http://digg.com/tech_news/Cuil_Doesent_show_its_own_name_when_searched

Cuil doesent show its own name.. Talk about Cook search engine hahah