Reading the announcements regarding Cuil, one would imagine that it is primed to unseat Google’s search dominance within the span of weeks. Significant to-do was generated regarding its not-so-humble beginnings as the child of $33 million in venture capitalist funding and the hands of several ex-Google employees. However, practical use has left me dissatisfied and wanting more from the engine to meet the the basic expectations set by its peers.
Cuil’s July 28 debut press release makes the bold implication that Google is not delivering the best experience on the internet. With phrases like “limitations, “true potential,” and “more comprehensive” delivered under the pretense of ex-Googlers, it’s hard not to see where Cuil is attempting to position themselves in the market.
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.
Yet as Cuil postures to combat Google’s dominance of the web, I find it vaguely irritating that it does not boast even the most basic amenities offered by today’s search engines. Today’s engines do not — must not — crawl text and text alone. The internet is no longer a sterile house of words, but it is now filled with an abundance of pictures, movies and audio that must also be cataloged.
Today’s top-five global search engines (Google, Yahoo!, Baidu, MSN and Naver) understand this fundamental shift in the wants of users. All of them offer specific searches for pictures and video, if not additional content. Cuil does not.
In a more subjective light, search engines are made or broken by the pertinence of their results. Google has made its meteoric rise to search engine superstardom by providing quality results with easy searches, and even better results with a suite of advanced search refinement techniques. Using Google and Cuil, I sought articles within Icrontic’s portfolio using keywords that are liberally sprinkled throughout the respective articles I was seeking. I then compared the accuracy of the results to what I was intending to find. Allow me to provide some examples:
Icrontic’s Memtest86 Guide:
Google: Results
Cuil: Results
In this case, getting more specific by citing “memtest86” caused Cuil to suggest that there were no results at all.
Icrontic’s recap of Yahoo! v. Microsoft:
Google: Results
Cuil: Results
By refining my search on Cuil to include the word “Microsoft,” Cuil suggested that there were, again, no results. When using keywords that are known to be in a given site, one imagines that increased specificity would increase the probability of the desired result. Cuil disagrees.
Sadly, my experiences were not limited to this. On a regular basis, Cuil failed to provide me with what I was looking for when employing searches that could not get any more simple.
There is no denying that a hip and enhanced version of Google would make a compelling case for enthusiasts. It’s a venture that would be enhanced by word of mouth, and grass-roots love for better results. But I can’t help but be disappointed with its initial showing when the art of first impression is so very important given the pedigree touted by its creators.
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