Ex-Google engineers debut 'Cuil' way to search

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080728/ap_on_hi_te/google_challenger;_ylt=AvjnSUtzgetWYNEdZ16bP4es0NUE

by snewe • 18 years ago

81 107 18 years ago

news.yahoo.com

And now TechCrunch:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/27/google-beats-cuil-hands-down-in-size-and-relevance-but-that-isnt-the-whole-story/

agotterer• 18 years ago

This has some serious work still...

A search for my name put me in a porno context with an image of a naked girl. The name of the video was "dirty movie", and the html title tag was "dirty movie on vimeo". This was not a pornographic video. Cuil matched a thumbnail image from movieon.com with a man and a woman having sex. This is something I dont want my name associated with.

Second, I did a search, then hit search again on the same keyword and it brought back 0 results. Took about five more clicks to get it to bring up results again. Another search said it found 8,000 results, but only gave me 3 pages worth of browsing. Last but not least the about page (http://www.cuil.com/info/) is not found.

azharcs2• 18 years ago

http://www.cuil.com/info/

I can see the info page.. Since lot of people are covering them, they are seeing a spike in traffic and maybe not able to handle it.

jharrison• 18 years ago

Definitely not ready for prime time.

I did several searches that said there were multiple pages of results but clicking the link to the second page brought up "no results".

I'm also not sure how fresh their index is. I went to a page from the results that didn't have the content the search said it did. Normally there would be several reasons for this but I happen to have enough knowledge of the target site to know they just have a very old version of it indexed.

beaudeal• 18 years ago

first things first...am i the only person who wants to keep saying "kweel" and not "cool"??

in terms of the site itself, i am sort of liking the design / layout of the search, although like agotterer said, it still needs a lot of work -- from what i can tell, popular search terms have pretty darn good results but unpopular search terms return sub-par results (see his example haha)... in terms of a threat to google?? id have to say its not, at least in this stage of the game, but only time will tell i suppose...

jmtame• 18 years ago

The team is impressive, they've been involved in AltaVista, Google, and Ebay. And Anna seems pretty confident that Google isn't going to change, although one of the lead Google engineers came to speak at our school last semester and said that they change the algorithms hundreds of times each year. He said it's not uncommon that they tweak it several times a week. Maybe it's not going through drastic changes, and maybe it doesn't look like a Yahoo portal, but they do continue to improve their algorithms.

It's really cool to see someone branching off and trying something like search, and I actually support Patterson's efforts. But there is a lot more to Google than just their search algorithm technology. They're running with the momentum of the brand, not to mention the massive collection of apps that people loyally follow.

Can you build a better search algorithm than Google that runs faster, with fewer computers, and containing more indeces? Possibly. I happen to know a lot of people who can cook a better cheeseburger than McDonald's, but that doesn't really get you "all the way." Google has criticisms, such as the search logging, which could be used for leverage and could make for easy user acquisitions. However, when you have HappyCamper1 who is (UsingGoogleSearch && UsingGmail), they'll most likely need a better reason to switch search engines because they're already using an e-mail service by the same company.

The important thing is that she gets into this space and attacks it vigorously. No king rules forever. May the best win.

gaius5• 18 years ago

Tweaking the coefficients is not the same thing as changing the algorithm. Google is no more immune from the Innovator's Dilemma than Microsoft is/was.

iamelgringo2• 18 years ago

They don't have to beat Google, they just have to be good enough to get picked up by Microsoft.

dhotson3• 18 years ago

I personally found the search results page a tad confusing. Having the results in a grid layout, my first impression was that they were all ads!

.. also, how do I know which result is #1 ? Top left? Middle?

prakash3• 18 years ago

why does it matter which result is #1 if you can find what you are looking for on the first page in the first row or first column?

tlrobinson2• 18 years ago

I actually liked the grid view, it fits a lot more results on one screen so I can scan them quickly. They should make it auto-fit the screen width.

jimbokun• 18 years ago

"i am sort of liking the design / layout of the search"

Did it strike anyone else that this is one of the ideas that Y-combinator said it would like to fund? (beating Google at design in the search space)

unalone• 18 years ago

Right now? Vastly flawed rankings-wise.

http://www.cuil.com/search?q=gstepl

Every response is copying the message from a post I wrote on an inactive blog. More active results don't appear whatsoever.

kleevr• 18 years ago

At least Cuil has some respect for privacy:

"We do not keep logs of our users’ search activity."

"We analyze the Web, not our users. Read our Privacy Policy for details. It’s short."

http://www.cuil.com/info/privacy/

gaius5• 18 years ago

But Jo(e) User doesn't really care about that, he or she cares about search results. If (and admittedly this is unproven) Google can deliver better search results by logging and analyzing search activity to personalize results, then Cuil is already at a disadvantage.

marcus2• 18 years ago

How can you call it unproven? When I google for Python I get stuff related to programming because of my search history, when a zoologist looks for Pythons he'll see stuff related to snakes.

marijn2• 18 years ago

Exactly. I've seen some Google ads that were a bit too targeted lately -- related to stuff that I searched for last week -- and it is getting spooky. I'd like to have a decent alternative. Maybe I should just get used to Yahoo, but this looks hipper, no?

That being said, they haven't indexed my site yet. Amateurs!

axod5• 18 years ago

That's very worrying. Adverts people might be interested in shown to them? Cause for concern...

softwarejim• 18 years ago

what I find shady is that its against the law to spoof your competitors domain name, but google will allow you to display ads for when people search for your competitor.

thats a little underhanded if you ask me

ntoshev• 18 years ago

This means they miss big opportunities to improve their search results.

thomasmallen2• 18 years ago

"We're working on a new subway system. We're going to base its layout on building patterns rather than where our riders actually go. It would be a violation of privacy, and just plain wrong to check which buses are crowded."

demandred• 18 years ago

how is it pronounced? their name is not memorable.

arockwell2• 18 years ago

According to the article its "cool". I agree that it is not a memorable name.

vaksel• 18 years ago

sounds more like kewl

akd2• 18 years ago

With $33m in venture they could have spared a few Gs for a better domain name.

cvg• 18 years ago

It's just as memorable as google was on it's first day. A little branding and constantly improving results could make it a player. But, only time will tell. I'm cheering for them.

axod5• 18 years ago

I think google is more 'spellable' than cuil... or is it ciul or coul or ceul. Hell, the title for the post spells it with 2 'l's

river_styx• 18 years ago

Imagine the way a teenage daughter of yuppies would say the word "cool". Kind of like: [KYOO ill]. That helped me remember it, anyway.

arockwell2• 18 years ago

I think that this is an interesting approach. I like that they show more info about each result, but I also have more difficulty scanning through the results. I'm not sure if that's really a net win.

bdr• 18 years ago

"Rather than trying to mimic Google's method of ranking the quantity and quality of links to Web sites, Patterson says Cuill's technology drills into the actual content of a page."

Fancy presentation can't save you from the fate of altavista. What are they doing to solve the trust problem?

mynameishere• 18 years ago

I searched for one of my own websites and was extremely pissed to find that it found a bunch of more popular sites that link to it, but not the site itself. Eff that. I'm 100 percent in favor of google competitors, but that's just invalid...

bigbang• 18 years ago

give it some time folks. google wasnt better than ask.com when it launched.

paul• 18 years ago

Yes it was. Ask Jeeves was a stupid "natural language" thing back then -- basically a giant, hand edited, FAQ.

azharcs2• 18 years ago

Anything that can compete with Google is a good thing. I have already added them as my default search in Firefox and hoping they get better. Results are not yet perfect yet, but at least they are doing things differently. Best of Luck Cuill.

attack• 18 years ago

Looks good, and has a nice feel.

http://www.cuil.com/search?q=python%20generators&sl=long

But not so good here,

http://www.cuil.com/search?q=python%20generator%20examples&#...

lisper• 18 years ago

Or here:

http://flownet.com/ron/cuil.gif

(They seem to have fixed this.)

vizard• 18 years ago

hmm slightly weird. I searched for a term and didnt get any results. I searched for the same term 10 minutes later and i got results? Anyway, some stuff is not returning any results : "nvidia gtx 280" didnt return any result :(

aston• 18 years ago

Does anybody know what happened to that second el? They used to be Cuill for the longest...

neilk• 18 years ago

Trying to like this but failing. It didn't get even decent results for any of the queries I fed it.

I wonder if competing head-on with Google is a wise strategy. It's really hard to beat them without years of effort, and until then no one wants to use your site. There must be some other way.

vegashacker• 18 years ago

Same for me. I tried two test queries and had none of the results that I wanted to see (which I do see on Google).

akd2• 18 years ago

My name gets 2,290 hits on Google and 0 on Cuil, and many of those 2,290 are on some of the biggest domains on the Web. I'm having trouble believing Cuil's claim of indexing more pages.

vikram• 18 years ago

It doesn't work. Almost none of my searches worked. I think it gives too much importance to title text.

trekker7• 18 years ago

I'd be interested to know about some of the cooler pages that are indexed by Cuill, but not Google.

DocSavage• 18 years ago

It seems to be putting incorrect pictures with names. I did a simple search of "Hacker News" and Sam Odio came up on the first search page. I thought, cool, Cuil managed to put his picture right next to his Hacker News profile. But then I clicked through to his blog and unless he's really changed over time, I think they got the picture wrong :)

Take a look: http://billkatz-test.appspot.com/static/images/cuil.png

william42• 18 years ago

I did a search for "Terror Island" and although the first link to the webcomic http://terrorisland.net had its title bar correct, the links to individual strips had unrelated pictures of boats.

LogicHoleFlaw• 18 years ago

I laughed. My name came up with some of my online profiles, but with a photo of some British boy band singer....

walle• 18 years ago

I think they should have single column search results.

morbidkk• 18 years ago

I cant get the result for my newly registered domain name on cuil whereas I can see the result on google. Also no blogspot/googlepages result for your query.

I found the result page lot different compared to google UI. Its paradigm shift and difficult to comprehend. Our brain and eyes are used to google search result look and feel.

prakash3• 18 years ago

If there are so many people bashing cuil they must be doing something right (privacy features, UI) we just don't know all of it yet!

jexe• 18 years ago

Could be that we're just jealous of how thoroughly the press covered their adequate-but-not-earth-shattering startup. ;)

jessewmc• 18 years ago

So how are they planning to monetize this? AdSense?

So far they're vague on this. Ironically Cuil was useless, http://www.cuil.com/search?q=cuil%20money&sl=long http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=cuil+money&btnG...

but with google I found this:

"Eventually, Cuil plans to make money by running ads alongside search results, she said, but provided no further details."

The design is nice and the layout/features seem promising, though. Pleasant to use when it works.

tss• 18 years ago

Three major problems that I see right off the bat:

1.) Quality of Search-- In order to be successful, the quality of their search must be at least as good as Google (obviously it much more helpful if it's better). As many have noted, this clearly is not the case right now, and slightly complex queries such as "Linux search and remove multiple files" return zero results.

2.) Revenue Stream-- As noted above, it is going to be difficult for Cuil to break into the search market because they have to achieve such a high quality of search. But even if they are successful breaking into the market, how are they going to generate revenue? An Adsense like program? That's just another thing that they would have to do better then Google, and I just don't see both things happening.

3.) Overcoming Inertia-- Even if Cuil addresses 1 and 2, the moment of inertia of an average Google user is very high. Google has the best web mail available on the market, and along with all the other services Google provides, people will be reluctant to switch their searching to Cuil because everything else that they do will still be through Google.

I don't mean to be negative, and more power to these guys for taking on an area of the web that most people are afraid to even look at. But I guess I would say that if I were to plan a startup, I would probably pick a more advantageous slice of the market (probably one that doesn't exist at the time of planning). At the same time, you have to play your strengths as a programmer, and it seems like thats what the Cuil team is doing.

danielrhodes• 18 years ago

One big part of quality of search is figuring out which sites people click on when they search for something and making that result more relevant. I can't imagine Cuil not doing that, and over time their results will probably get a lot better. Considering they started off with no data like this, not bad so far.

HendrikR• 18 years ago

Looks as though as it's closed temporarily: "We’ll be back soon...

Due to overwhelming interest, our Cuil servers are running a bit hot right now. The search engine is momentarily unavailable as we add more capacity.

Thanks for your patience."

snorkel• 18 years ago

Now it's not responding at all. Don't sell your Google stock just yet.

iamelgringo2• 18 years ago

They did just launch. I'm sure they still have a few bugs to work out.

bootload• 18 years ago

Interesting. I ran a few keywords through and ...

with http://www.cuil.com/search?q=hacker+news we get an url to this site, good.

with http://www.cuil.com/search?q=hackernews we get a link to pretty what I've put up: eg: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/2710119622/

with http://www.cuil.com/search?q=cuil you get no mention of the site itself.

with http://www.cuil.com/search?q=spock you get a peek of how they cuil are structuring more complex searches using drop down menus - bad because it's slower to read & requires a conscious effort to do so.

maxwell• 18 years ago

Would cool.com have been better? :)

http://web.archive.org/web/20061004185947/paulgraham.infogam...

volida• 18 years ago

something tells me a search engine that mimics the /search?q= url of Google isn't so much innovative.

Google results structure is a win. White background is a win.

I think they are solving the wrong problem.

parenthesis• 18 years ago

It seems to me that a way to potentially creep up on google would be to make a specialist search engine. Some topic area that google is not so useful for searching on. Make a search system that 'understands' the domain in question, allowing it to index and search it really effectively.

As a random example, say, a movies search engine. If it could be consistently more useful than google for finding out information about movies, directors, actors, the movie industry etc., then it could become the 'go to' tool for movie search. Potentially, this success could then be leveraged to move into other areas of search.

thorax• 18 years ago

Well, you're pretty much describing "vertical" search engines. There are a lot of those these days, and I think they have good chances of being successful, too.

It's like what we're doing over at bug.gd-- building up an error-based search engine. Our upcoming version (we hope to announce in the next month or so) will have a variety of techniques optimized for searching for errors on the web. (E.g. filtering of user-specific "noise" in error messages, better integration into software, etc.) With the added bonus of capturing feedback from users that can be used for future users and for software writers.

We've been seeing some great uptake lately, so I'm bullish on the vertical search space.

We've been debating on a two-column search results page for our redesign, so we're watching cuil's success closely to see how people like that kind of presentation.

pg2• 18 years ago

What you should make is a specialist search engine for hackers. They're the early adopters in search engines, so if you get them you have the quickest path to getting everyone else.

Imagine how alarmed Google would be if there were a different search engine the top 10k hackers all used, even if they had everyone else. And rightly so.

http://news.ycombinator.com/apply ...

thomasmallen2• 18 years ago

That's optimistic, but to be successful with "hackers" the search engine would most likely have to steer its user experience in directions that wouldn't appeal to an everyday user. Typically, us geeks want both maximum control and elegant usability, always preferring control to usability. With most users, the inverse is true.

bOR_• 18 years ago

Heh. I'm not amongst the top 10k, but I've been cursing yesterday, trying to use search to find out in what version / gem of ruby {|[]| } is a valid block (with just being random variable names). And a week before that the same problem when trying to find out what &@/ ment in a mathematica script.

Search engines tend to ignore symbols in normal search, and while you can search for symbols in google's code search, that doesn't include any documentation or pages where they explain a particular syntax.

ph0rque• 18 years ago

you mean like octopart?

breck• 18 years ago

imdb for your movie example.

bprater• 18 years ago

I think that's how Google made some distance in the early days. I was using it and telling my friends about it when everyone was still using Yahoo!

aneesh• 18 years ago

This is exactly what Microsoft is doing. Microsoft is trying to tackle search in different verticals: healthvault for health, Farecast (acquired) for travel, Cashback for commerce, etc.

The challenge is that users don't always think "hmm, I'm doing a movie query, let me go to imdb". They go to Google and type everything into one box, and expect to get a link to imdb or wherever.

sh1mmer• 18 years ago

Well isn't that the point of Yahoo BOSS? To enable people to make their own vertical web search engines?

EastSmith• 18 years ago

If they add ssl I am sold!

johnrob• 18 years ago

http://www.cuil.com/search?q=paul+graham

Somehow they managed to get a monkey and a basketball scene in the images for a paul graham search. That doesn't seem right to me...

frouaix• 18 years ago

Cuil seems to be a company of hackers. Just have a look at the founders page: Anna Patterson? wrote 2 search engines (Xift and Recall.archive.org) before the GOOG. Louis Monier? major contributor to at least one search engine (Alta Vista), and also said to have helped eBay.

domnit• 18 years ago

They're new, so I don't want to dismiss them, but if their selling point is their larger-than-Google index, I'm not buying. On my sample query, I got a web proxy in both the first and second pages of results. It's easy to have a large index if you are showing the same thing in triplicate. Google does a great job of narrowing their large index to what the user needs to know. Nothing wrong with some healthy competition, but Google was right to stop (publicly) counting pages.

jonknee• 18 years ago

Searching Cuil for 'cuil' results in a lot of hits, none being their site. Searching Google for 'cuil' has them up at number one, plus news results from today's PR bash. That's a big ball of fail.

mhartl• 18 years ago

My search for 'cuil' on Cuil was even worse, leading to zero results, while a search for 'Cuil' yields lots of results (but, as you noted, not cuil.com itself). So it looks like Cuil is case-sensitive as well as incomplete.

protothomas• 18 years ago

Searching for 'cuill' (two 'l's) works - which is what they apparently changed their name from, seemingly at the last minute.

smhinsey• 18 years ago

Whoever does their PR earned their check today.

tlrobinson2• 18 years ago

One really annoying thing is that page up / page down / arrow keys don't work (sometimes). Maddening.

bbgm• 18 years ago

My initial reaction to Cuil was positive, but that's cause I kinda liked the interface and the first few searches I tried did really well. Lesson learned: Try at least 20, cause some were just horrendous.

That said, there is some promise, and the "related information" tab, while currently only semi-useful does show some promise. The challenge is that people are not going to have the patience for Cuil to be "at least as good as Google". That just doesn't work, and shouldn't

mleonhard• 18 years ago

I like how the results layout. They need to work on finding more relevant thumbnails. The thumbnail shown for my own website is completely unrelated to me.

niels_olson• 18 years ago

I went to post cuil's comment policy on Edward Tufte's bulletin board thread "Not spying on users should be a feature: The keep-it-and-lose-it hypothesis". Searching ET's site in situ is painful, but Google is pretty good at finding Ask ET threads, so I thought I'd try cuil. Cuil didn't find the thread at all with "Edward Tufte Not spying feature", which has got to be unique.

Also, didn't the google blog recently mention they had passed the trillion mark?

Ex-Google engineers debut 'Cuil' way to search

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