1 post tagged “web”

Google alum Anna Patterson, who wrote an index of 30 billion web pages that became a template for Google and after which she spent 4 years there, rolled out a new search engine no Monday called Cuil (pronounced "Cool" or "Kewl" if you prefer) with a team of former Googlers. The New York Times offered some information about it, then subsequently editorialized it as "building a car company to show off a new transmission" on the Bits blog.

I've taken a spin around Cuil, and my initial reaction is that it looks very Facebook-y, and it's result lists are much more media intensive than a Google search, showing little photos with a paragraphy blurb of text for each result. Given that, it would seem to me that perhaps Cuil wants to establish a foothold in the web space for younger users where more refinement of specified topics seems to be the trend. If so, though, why are they indexing the whole web? Will they roll out new media specific festures to try and nicheify? Or are they just hoping to dump the company to a larger player because they built this search engine so cheaply? Perhaps that is the likliest outcome and objective here.

I liked the search engine well enough, and certainly think because of the uniqueness of its layout, it could serve as a better second option to Google than any of the would be competitiors like ask and yahoo. I might use it a bit - guess it depends how much time I spend on the 'net.