Cuil joins Google, others in search for better search

The search engine wars are heating up again with the public launch tonight of Cuil (pronounced "cool").

The Menlo Park start-up behind the website isn't trying to be a Google killer -- it's trying to reinvent search, says Anna Patterson, president and co-founder of Cuil.

She's an ex-Googler, the architect of the Web giant's TeraGoogle search index that launched in 2006. She joined Google in 2004 after her work on Recall, then the largest search engine with 12 billion pages, which she began programming during a difficult pregnancy. That feat spurred a bidding war among search engines for her services. (Note to moms: Microsoft does not allow breast-feeding in its lobby.)

As exciting as her three years at Google were, Patterson said she soon discovered she was an entrepreneur at heart.

The computer science Ph.D. and mother of four says search engines cannot keep up with the explosive growth of the Internet nor with the needs of users who too often get frustrated sifting through too many random results. Cuil says it has come up with a search engine that indexes 120 billion Web pages, ranks results by relevance instead of popularity, organizes the results by ideas and protects the privacy of its users. A screen shot of the results page for a "Harry Potter" search is above.

Cuil has what Patterson calls a "magazine layout," with tabs and images for subjects. It offers ...

... suggestions to assist in searches. And it does not collect personal data, so your search history is always private, she said. Advertising, which will be added later, will be based on the content, not on people's surfing habits.

"We are trying to shake things up and find new ways to help people," Patterson said.

Patterson leads the company with her husband, CEO and co-founder Tom Costello, who researched and developed search engines at Stanford University and IBM. They are joined by a third founder, ex-Googler Russell Power, and vice president of products Louis Monier, a veteran of Google and EBay who also was the founding chief technology officer of AltaVista.

Cuil is an Irish name that means wisdom. And the team seems to be bringing that wisdom to the daunting task of improving search. The start-up, which has 30 employees and has raised $33 million, is taking its time doing that. "We are focused on slow and steady growth," Patterson said.

Cuil did not make the search engine available for us or others to play with. But Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence, said he was impressed with the caliber and the attitude of the entrepreneurs behind it.

"These are search people who are not building a product they want to sell quickly. They are not about trying to make a lot of money in a short period of time. They are building what they believe is the next-generation search engine," Sterling said. "Its success or failure over time will depend on how relevant the search results are, how easy it is to use and how useful it is to people."

"Many have come before Cuil and tried to be the Google killer," Sterling added. "I don't think they have that attitude. They are just building a search engine."

How Cuil.

-- Jessica Guynn

Photo courtesy of Cuil

Comments

[Eric]

I just tried Cuil for the first time. I think it is fantastic -- far more readable and comprehensive than Google. They still have some bugs to work out, but we finally have a legitimate challenger to Google. Thank goodness. We deserve real competition. The last thing we need is another Microsoft controlling the search business.

[Ivan_PSP]

Cuil is going no where when i searched for the word PLAYSTATION 3 on Cuil i got 3,200,000 look at my other results.

1. Yahoo 440,000,000
2. MSN 152,000,000
3. Google 109,000,000
4. AOL 17,400,000
5. Ask 16,120,000
6. Cuil 3,200,000

[Packen]

WOW!!!! it will be great and i think we r going 2 enter in a new search world.

[Svetlana Gladkova]

The problem I see with Cuil and today's coverage of this new search engine in the blogosphere is that they have not allowed anyone to actually play with it in advance. My guess is that they wanted everyone to republish their claims of having a better approach to search instead of letting people try the engine and prove it fails way too often for a company that claims so much incredible things. And once people started doing actual searches, the tone of the discussions changed immediately because no matter how hyped a product is, if it does not work to the expectations, it will receive criticism.

[Mike]

I tried cuil it seemed slow probably due to all the hits and i noticed the safe filter (on/off) easy for kids to figure that out. i found a truly safe search called unamoo that works without buttons and should be safe for all users. just my .02

[Scott H.]

Search results are slow and irrelevant to what I searched on. Although the results "layout" is stylish, when I'm doing a search I want is information -- it doesn't matter what it looks like.

Looks to me Cuil is swimming with the sharks; and not enough repellent.

[tyneham]

Armchair critics unfairly compare Cuil with Google, Yahoo and MSN, etc. Cuil is a new startup, launched with $33 million in August 2008. Initially, Cuil is not in the same league as Google (startup January 1998) and Yahoo (startup 1993). Google still has less linked web pages compared with Yahoo. Both have W3C errors, but MSN has none. Google was the fifth biggest US outfit and global brand #20 in 2007 when its stock market capitalization was $230 billion with annual revenue of $16 billion, $4 billion profits and 20,000 employees. Both Google and Yahoo are harmed by Internet click fraud... http://tyneham.wordpress.com, http://tyneham.blogspot.com

[panimozhi]

When going in search of "megaupload links" i can't get result as easier than google.Apart from this it's much better than google as far my searching.
It's better when cuil releases realated webpages contain the searched word in the website itself...

[Liam Hamilton]

What an amazing search engine!
Its quick! easy to refine searches doesn't waste half the page (like google) and make you scroll for no reason

The results you get are actually more relevant than google. As for the following figures:
1. Yahoo 440,000,000
2. MSN 152,000,000
3. Google 109,000,000
4. AOL 17,400,000
5. Ask 16,120,000
6. Cuil 3,200,000
enjoy looking through 100,000,000 or more entries to find something relevant. Cuil has the most relevant ones anyway, not all the additional rubbish.