Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Cuil maybe not so cool

OK, so yesterday I was all excited about the prospect of a Google competitor. After all, competition's a good thing, and Google is getting a little too pervasive in the information world for comfort.
So I gave upstart www.cuil.com a shake. Yesterday about half my searches resulted in an error message stating servers were overloaded. This wasn't starting off well. Moreover, many of the promised features, like tabs and a unique drill-down tool, didn't seem to be up yet.
Perhaps most troubling was the search results themselves. I've long been skeptical of Google's ultra-secret search algorithm that leaves most of the Web invisible. Cuil didn't really seem any better, though. Results of the searches I tried (Twinsburg library, my own name, how to fix a broken vase without my wife catching on, etc.) mostly just pulled up various iterations of the same sites.
I hope Cuil catches on and improves. At first blush, though, it looks like the former Google devs behind the project may have bitten off more than they can chew.

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