Not Very Cuil

[Pangloss]

Anybody check out Cuil (pronounced "cool"), the new search engine from former Google employees?

 

http://www.cuil.com

 

Unfortunately it's been up and down all day, and reportedly very sporadic in news accounts as well. They do have a Firefox module (for that search thingie in the upper-right corner), which is nice, I like the way they organize search results to take advantage of widescreen monitors. Here's a screen shot:

 

 

That's from this Ars Technica article:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080728-ex-googlers-launch-biggest-search-engine-on-the-web.html

 

They say it has the largest index, with over 120 billion pages, but last week (not coincidentally, I'm sure) Google released a press statement claiming they have a trillion pages indexed. Whatever.

[Mr Skeptic]

I've heard about it when my grandfather mentioned it, which is quite surprising as he knows almost nothing of computers and always needs help using one. Seems it was on the news, related to google stock.

[CaptainPanic]

Tried it for a few searches, and couldn't find any different results than Google's...

 

I wonder if there's a real difference between a huge index and a really huge index. I mean, for a given keyword, the first hits (most linked or most relevant) will not change soon... And if you need the 2845th hit, then both search engines are not the best way to go...

 

Anyway, I will be trying it for a bit, if only because Google already knows enough about my life.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Good. We're first for "science forums" on Cuil. I approve.

[Sayonara]

Good. We're first for "science forums" on Cuil. I approve.

 

Cuil for admin!

[Mr Skeptic]

I did a few random searches on Cuil, and I think I like the layout. I generally have my browser to fill my whole screen, so they have effective use of my screen real estate. My first search was for sword, and I found it has a very nice "explore by category" tab for that. Unfortunately, the "explore by category" tab is rather incomplete yet, but for some reason the sword one was particularly good.

 

Ultimately, it will be much easier for someone to copy their layout than for them to copy someone's search results. In the end, what matters is who has the search results IMO, and I'm not sure whether or not it is them.

[bascule]

For the record, Google claims to have 1 trillion pages in their index:

 

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/we-knew-web-was-big.html

[Ozone]

Well, at least it was not "K3wl".

 

Cheers,

 

O3

[iPeppers]

I heard about this and tried it out. I liked the layout, I don't end having to scroll down as much to find relevant search results that I tend to use, because they are spread out across the screen horizontally as well as down.

 

One feature that I wish they had was the option on the homepage to change the general website search to an image search, as I tend to use that feature on google sometimes.

[Pangloss]

The tabs are kinda cool (cuil?) as well. I miss the image searching too, though. In fact it's really missing a LOT of stuff that Google has. And I wouldn't be surprised if Google adds a column-based search results layout soon.

[Psycho]

The tabs are kinda cool (cuil?) as well. I miss the image searching too, though. In fact it's really missing a LOT of stuff that Google has. And I wouldn't be surprised if Google adds a column-based search results layout soon.

Indeed, or at least the option to view the page in multiple different formats depending on which you like best as mots search engines do all use the same format.

[Think it thru]

It reminds me of the Carrot2 search engine which clusters---like bunches of carrots?

 

http://demo.carrot2.org/demo-stable/main

[dethfire]

this SE seriously blows, what a joke. all the press they got and I'd rather use altavista lol

[TrickyPeach]

Is it even functioning properly yet? Google will never be toppled, not for a while. They are the new MS, in a way, except of course their motto (which makes it all ok) is: "Don't be evil" so we can sleep well.

 

I actually quite like Google, Cuil was just trying to copy it rather than bring something new and useful into the mix, which is why it's doing badly.