Cuil Just Isn’t Very Cool

Cuil has entered the search engine stage and is already looking for some applause.

In an effort to do what AltaVista, Lycos and zillions of other search engines couldn't, Cuil (pronounced "cool") has unveiled itself as the new competitor to the Google behemoth. While it will take some considerable time to see if Cuil can earn the coveted title of Google-killer, it does have a subversive feel to it, given that many of the creators are former Google employees.

And we'd love to see it upstage Google if only to see Steve Ballmer fly into a rage because a little startup can beat Microsoft to the search engine punch.



But after using Cuil, we're starting to doubt the Google-killer predictions. The Cuil founders claim to be able to give more relevant results by indexing more pages than Google and using a special search algorithm (the "secret sauce" of the search engine world, as if everyone doesn't already claim to have one).

Unfortunately, Cuil's results for our searches were actually quite irrelevant. We don't expect Cuil to be psychic, but we do expect relevancy, and Cuil didn't produce it. Most of the search results were so obscure and unrelated to our search terms that it was almost like Cuil was trying to be unusual and ambiguous, like a search engine counter-culture activist.

And to top it all off, the more-indexed-pages claim is either a lie or the algorithm is electronic poop because many of our searches returned no results at all. Don't worry, we cross-checked and the same search terms in Google brought up plenty of hits.

It'd be great to see someone make Google sweat, but it appears that Cuil has a lot of kinks to work out, including the name. Sorry, but I had to say it. Are we suddenly speaking Portuguese or something? Weird spelling won't make you cool, Cuil.

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