Totally UnCuil
by John Paczkowski
Posted on July 28, 2008 at 9:42 AM PT
If your mission is to beat Google in the search market, it’s probably wise to give your upstart search engine a name that people know how to pronounce. It’s also wise to make sure that the name appears in the first page of search results. Cuil, the upstart search engine that debuted today with aspirations of unseating Google, has apparently done neither.
Cuil, sophomorically pronounced “cool,” isn’t exactly the sort of name from which global brands are made (Google arguably wasn’t either but at least people knew how to pronounce it). And if its search engine boasts greater comprehension and relevance than Google’s (GOOG) as Cuil claims, why doesn’t it display the company itself in a search for “Cuil” instead of “Restaurants in Cuil Dabhcha,” “French Cuisine,” and “Lochaber”? (My first search for “cuil” returned nothing at all.) This, from a search outfit with a Web index three times the assumed size of Google’s and an executive team of Google veterans?
“You can’t be an alternative search engine and smaller,” said Anna Patterson, Cuil co-founder and president. “You have to be an alternative and bigger.”
And you have to be useful. Effective, too. Right now, Cuil seems to be lacking in both areas. “This is the most promising thing I’ve seen in a while,” said Search Engine Land editor Danny Sullivan. “Whether they are going to threaten Microsoft (MSFT), much less Google, that’s another story.”
To be fair, Cuil does have one thing going for it: a privacy policy that seems to be quite a bit more favorable to users than Google’s.
Privacy is a hot topic these days, and we want you to feel totally comfortable using our service, so our privacy policy is very simple: When you search with Cuil, we do not collect any personally identifiable information, period. We have no idea who sends queries: not by name, not by IP address, and not by cookies (more on this later). Your search history is your business, not ours.”
Comments
The only way “cuil” is pronounced “cool” is if you have been living in the valley so long you actually talk and think that way.
Obviously four letter domain names are in short supply.
Posted by Mac Beach at July 28th, 2008 at 11:23 amPrediction: Cuil blows the doors off google.
Thank you, have a nice day! 
Mark
Posted by Mark Light at July 28th, 2008 at 12:20 pmI wish Cuil all the success in the world, but there were a few first-day glitches. I got an error page the first time I clicked on the management AND investors tab.
Oops!
Posted by Benito Hammerino at July 28th, 2008 at 12:41 pmi tried cuil
i dont think it is good at all
google is special
i hate to say it
but it is
cuil will sell its technology for $100m or under
it will not be a stand alone search engine
Posted by ari goldberg at July 28th, 2008 at 1:41 pmIf the goal was larger not better, then Cuill may have a lock on the gold. The results returned when I entered a couple of my standard searches were totally useless. Adding quotes and +’s and -’s to more narrowly define the terms resulted in nothing, literally–no results. I guess searches are what they are and any effort to make them more effective be damned.
When you can point to Microsoft as having a superior search engine (based on results–not size of index or speed), you can be sure your product is not ready for prime time.
My guess is the technology will give chip heads a big warm fuzzy and the privacy policy will bring out the cup cakes at the next meeting of the “black helicopter conspiracy club,” and in the end Steve B. will buy it and the VC’s will stave off foreclosures and put away the clipped Charmin coupons for another day.
Posted by John Carey at July 28th, 2008 at 4:48 pm