Monday, July 28, 2008

cuil kill google

Cuil is pronounced cool and is an old Irish word for knowledge.

This search engine has been launched by ex Google engineers and they are planning to outdo their parent and mother of all search engines " Google".

Will cuil succeed or not only time will tell. Changing net surfers habits is not such an easy task. The would-be Google rival says its service goes beyond prevailing search techniques that focus on Web links and audience traffic patterns and instead analyzes the context of each page and the concepts behind each user search request.

"Our significant breakthroughs in search technology have enabled us to index much more of the Internet, placing nearly the entire Web at the fingertips of every user," Tom Costello, Cuil co-founder and chief executive, said in a statement.

Danny Sullivan, a Web search analyst and editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land, said Cuil can try to exploit complaints consumers may have with Google -- namely, that it tries to do too much, that its results favor already popular sites, and that it leans heavily on certain authoritative sites such as Wikipedia.

"The time may be right for a challenger," Sullivan says, but adds quickly: "Competing with Google is still a very daunting task, as Microsoft will tell you."

Cuil has indexed a whopping 120 billion Web pages, three times more than what they say Google now indexes, Patterson said, adding the company has spent just $5 million,

Google itself preemptively responded to Cuil's arrival with a blog post on Friday boasting of the growing scale of its own Web search operations.

Initially, Cuil is optimized for American English. Later this year, the company plans to enable Cuil users to perform searches in major European languages, Patterson said. Eventually, Cuil plans to make money by running ads alongside search results, she said, but provided no further details.

Cuil is one of a number of start-ups that are looking to introduce new technology that can change the competitive dynamics of the Web search market that Google dominates.

Although I must say that even established players like Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask.com -- all of whom have established quality search products -- haven't dented Google either.

So what makes Cuil worthy of special attention? There are four major areas that Cuil is putting out to distinguish itself from other services. These are:

* Big web index
* Unique relevance algorithm
* Unique results display
* Privacy

It's possible that Cuil could be a wild success that eclipses Yahoo and Microsoft and does threaten Google itself, of course. Anything's possible, only time will tell.

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