Google's New Competition?

Dale King · 07-30-2008, 07:23 AM

A new search engine launched today has market leader Google nervous. Why? Because Cuil.com (pronounced “cool”) is being touted as having the potential to topple Google off their pedestal. Yes, it’s been predicted before to no avail, but this time the critics might be right. Let’s take a look at reasons why: Click here to read the rest of this article.

On a personal note, I visited Cuil and played around with it a little, but I wasn't impressed. In fact, I don't like anything about the site at all.

What do you guys think about Cuil?

Dale King

rickawho · 07-30-2008, 07:58 AM

Not impressed. Try searching for "cuil", and their own site does not appear on the first page. It's hit and miss with other search terms. Layout of results is interesting though. Too bad the pictures often do not match up with the result! Hopefully they can work out some of the bugs.

matt_15 · 07-30-2008, 08:18 AM

Interesting. How does cuil plan on advertising? They would need to be seen everywhere to compete successfully with google.

RLorenzen · 07-30-2008, 08:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rickawho

Not impressed. Try searching for "cuil", and their own site does not appear on the first page. It's hit and miss with other search terms. Layout of results is interesting though. Too bad the pictures often do not match up with the result! Hopefully they can work out some of the bugs.

It's interesting that they're not #1 for Cuil on cuil.com, but they are #1 for cuil on AOL, Yahoo and Google.

I don't like the layout at all. It takes longer to read than Google results.

SophieM · 07-30-2008, 08:28 AM

That looks pretty interesting, although I think Google is in a very strong position now as it really has a strong grip on the search market, a much stronger grip than its competitors had when it started, especially with people saying things like "Google it".

I think as long as they get through to the searchers they may have the ability to topple Google, but while people like my friends and parents haven't heard of them, they can't succeed. Also, Google have a huge empire outside of search now, they have Docs, Blogspot, Android etc, maybe there is a possibility they could survive without search or even buy this new search engine?

Anyway, I like Google and its layout, this is a bit...fancy and messy for me.

Thanks for letting us know about this Dale, very interesting.

Sophie

Enke · 07-30-2008, 08:57 AM

I think they could become a player, however Sophie made some great points about the other things Google offers besides just search. It would take years for Cuil to catch up with all this technology and add the value that google does to both webmasters and surfers.

Also regardless of the amount of pages indexed at Cuil, the results thus far have been pretty poor for tmany of the competitive search terms I tested.

snowswap · 07-30-2008, 09:19 AM

Takes too long to find results. Not really impressed at all.

Dale King · 07-30-2008, 09:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SophieM

I like Google and its layout, this is a bit...fancy and messy for me.

Thanks for letting us know about this Dale, very interesting.

No problem. Thanks, Sophie!

Dale King

flnazrael · 07-30-2008, 12:04 PM

Just more hype. Yahoo is the next closest thing to Google in relevancy and quality, and even they're still way behind.

DallasCrilley · 07-30-2008, 12:07 PM

Google is way too far ahead at this point for anyone to have a real chance at beating them.. it's already a household name. "Yeah, one sec, let me 'Google' that."

flnazrael · 07-30-2008, 12:21 PM

If Google was a typical lazy giant megacorp, concerned only with profits and stifling innovation, then someone could take them down.

Google is hardly typical, though.

Search and take a look at their buildings and work centers. They have slides, free cafes, chill out rooms, all kinds of weird and interesting things. Google also allows employees to spend 20% of their time working on whatever they want - some of their best features have come from this.

Google also invests tens of millions (probably more) into R&D - they are nowhere near at their pinnacle. They are simultaneously testing and developing dozens of new technologies.

Until this trend changes, no one else has a chance.

invncble · 07-30-2008, 12:51 PM

Meh.....

I don't like it at all.

HarveyJ · 07-30-2008, 08:22 PM

After mucking about with Cuil for most of this week, I've reached some ideas on what it is and isn't good for in it;s present form.

It is GREAT for academic stuff. I've noticed a lot of academic (not just .edu stuff, but specific blogs from professors, etc) show up before the .com of the actual search terms.
It would seem that they're trying to be about useful, serious, information.

Which means that it's not commercially oriented, which means it'll be bad for business.

So, what's the point in making it at all then?
Well, a lot of people are sick to death of Google's SERP being filled with useless crap that's basically affiliate marketing that's been SEOd to the back teeth.
Has anyone noticed how hard it is to actually do research on Google anymore, without knowing how to use the logic functions ("", +, -, inurl:, etc)?
(Personally, if I'm trying to find out info, I'll go straight to wikipedia and hit up the external link section. If it doesn't exist on Wiki, then I assume it's just marketing.)

So something like Cuil will most likely become a decent resource for those attempting to find information for research purposes, but don't have access to academic databases and libraries like the LexisNexis.

rickawho · 07-30-2008, 09:47 PM

It's already spawned a knockoff that works better. Check www[dot]yuil[dot]com.

The reason why it works better is because it is modded off of Yahoo's API.

UPDATE: Yuil is dead. Was created as a demo by a developer (Sam Pullara) using Yahoo’s Boss API.

1entrepreneur · 07-30-2008, 10:50 PM

I've already received some searches from cuil.