Cuil - the next Google killer?

Cuil (pronounced ‘COOL’) is a new search engine startup created by Google's former top engineers. Cuil claims that it can index web pages significantly faster and cheaper than Google. Cuil has told potential investors that their indexing costs will be 1/10th of Google’s, based on new search architectures and relevance methods.

A look at cuil.com start page below brings to mind Google’s minimalist home page.



I searched for "Thailand" which returned 92,925,481 results (not bad for a startup which is only a few hours old) as against Google's 306,000,000 which seems to good a number to be ending in that many zeros. The search results for Thailand looked like the picture below:



The search results are shown in three columns and contain an image and more summary text than existing search engines. Along with the results there is an "Explore by Category" box on the top right corner of the page which breaks down into categories like "Cities In Thailand", "Islands Of Thailand", "Districts Of Bangkok", "Regions Of Thailand", and "LPGA Tour Golfers". Each of these categories consists of links (such as "Phi Phi Islands") that displays more specific results.

Cuil is already being touted in the blogosphere as the next 'Google killer'. But unless Cuil can develop an advertisement platform to rival Google’s, Cuil will have a tough time challenging the search giant.

Cuil launched publicly on 28th July, 2008 but then crashed immediately after launch owing it to "overwhelming demand." It is back in business now busy serving pages.

Cuil is pioneering a new approach to search, unveiling its innovative search offering, which combines the biggest Web index with content-based relevance methods, results organized by ideas, and complete user privacy. Cuil was founded by several lead engineers from Google, including Anna Patterson, chief architect of the company’s TeraGoogle search index. Cuil claims its search algorithm scans through 120 billion web pages - three times the number that Google sifts through. Cuil also claims to have better search results than Google and others based on how they index websites. They do not simply catalog keywords on a site and then rank the site based on its importance. They also work to understand how words are related, to return more relevant results to users.

Summary of Cuil’s features:

• Biggest Internet search engine - Cuil has indexed 120 billion Web pages, 3x more than any other search engine
• Organized results - Cuil’s magazine-style layout separates results by subject and allows further search by concept or category
• Different results - Unlike other search engines, Cuil ranks results by the content on each page, not its popularity
• Complete privacy protection - Cuil does not keep any personally identifiable information on users or their search histories

The launch of Cuil certainly raised eyebrows at Google. But will Cuil be the next big threat to Google which has a decade's experience in perfecting their search engine?

Let's wait and watch.