Cuil - A First Look

Seems to me that everyone’s missing the original value proposition of Cuil. Their original claim was that they were going to build a search index at 1/10th the cost of what Google has produced. Has anyone asked Tom or Anna at Cuil what their actual index/search costs are? I’m not surprised that Cuil’s search results are poor. It doesn’t appear that they have anything special in terms of a Page Ranking algorithm at this point, but that really doesn’t matter if they were able to achieve an index/search at 1/10th of Google’s cost. If Tom & Anna achieved anything close to this cost savings I’d think that they would be prime picking for Google, Yahoo, Microsoft. At this point, if Cuil can demonstrate an up-to-date index that scales to Google’s level at 1/10th the cost, then I’d think Google or others would start taking a look at them. Based on what (little) I know about Anna and Tom, it seems to me that their strengths are in the area of architecture and index. Anna is all about the index, she built Archive.org - Jim McCusker

Right, but why not wait and make the service a little better and then announce themselves rather than do so prematurely and get a rather negative publicity? - Hayk Hakobyan

They had to launch something, even if it returned poor results. My point is that their value proposition is in the reduction of the size requirements for the index. If Cuil has achieved anything close to 1/10th of Google’s TeraGoogle index then they have a very valuable asset. - Jim McCusker

It is a nifty layout, but there are a few things I do not like. I have a difficult time finding my own domain even when I search it by name, The results seem random and unrelated, and finally why show a image by the results if you are not pulling those images from the sites themselves? It’s cool, and Web 2.0 looking, but I can not find what I am looking for on it. Strangely it is sending me traffic… I wish I could figure out what those people are searching to find me because I can not! -Brad - Brad\

Jim, I understand the value proposition Cuil intended to bring forth. However, I still disagree as to why launch smth that gets so much negative feedback. No one expected Cuil to be equivalent or comparable to Google from the beginning - except perhaps media - but it could have been lacking certain feats but still returning truthful if somewhat lesser results. What it returns now has been called almost a random mixture of links, photos and other content. I like the design and idea, but that is all there is. - Hayk Hakobyan

I suspect that Cuil had a lot of pressure to launch. But also, my point is that I don’t think their goal was to be a better Google. Look back on the original articles in TechCrunch and elsewhere where the founders of Cuil were promoting their small index. My point is simple, if they did create a Google-compatible index/search at 1/10th the cost then they have something to sell to Google/Yahoo/MSN/etc… I’m waiting for someone in Silicon Valley to ask that question. - Jim McCusker

If it’s really about cost, lets just use the phone book. - Darian Rawson