Google’s “Cuil” new competitor: not so cool for Google?

by Alex Zaharov-Reutt

Monday, 28 July 2008

Page 2 of 3 According to Cuil’s press release, the site “provides organized and relevant results based on Web page content analysis”, which goes beyond link analysis and goes into deeper page analysis, which is then grouped and sorted by category. According to Cuil, this gives you better results, with “tabs” breaking up information into further searchable categories, images to identify topics, and “search refining suggestions” to guide you to better answers. Ultimately, of course, consumers will need to try it out and see if they get better and more accurate results than they currently get with Google. My own quick attempts at searching with Cuil in researching for this storage showed that it did bring back relevant results, and definitely presents information in what appears to be a more organised and more graphical manner. Although it's a bit unusual... typing in "Fujitsu Tablet PC" brings up no results, but "Fujitsu Tablet" with or without the quotation marks brings up plenty, including results that are titled "Fujitsu Tablet PC!". Before writing Cuil off, as some have done in the comments, try it with a range of searches just to see what happens... But it is, quite clearly, early days, although I’ll definitely be searching with Cuil again just to see what it comes up with. So far, it’s dramatically more impressive than any other Google competitor I’ve ever seen based on the numerous results that came up with relevant answers (and I've checked again since reading some of the reader comments on page three). It does makes me wonder why Microsoft is stuffing around with trying to buy Yahoo! when they could be throwing some of that $50 billion towards Cuil. Tom Costello, CEO and co-founder of Cuil said in the press release that: “The Web continues to grow at a fantastic rate and other search engines are unable to keep up with it.” Costello continued: “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, who are the people behind the Cuil search engine? Well, it’s probably best to let the Cuil press release explain it: “Cuil’s technology was developed by a team with extensive history in search. The company is led by husband-and-wife team Tom Costello and Anna Patterson. “Mr. Costello researched and developed search engines at Stanford University and IBM; Ms. Patterson is best known for her work at Google, where she was the architect of the company’s large search index and led a Web page ranking team. “They refused to accept the limitations of current search technology and dedicated themselves to building a more comprehensive search engine. “Together with Russell Power, Anna’s former colleague from Google, they founded Cuil to give users the opportunity to explore the Internet more fully and discover its true potential.” Continued on page 3. << First page <   1 2 3 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

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