Cuil Tries to Rise Again

http://www.technologyreview.com/web/23038/?nlid=2196

by russell • 17 years ago

22 19 17 years ago

uptown• 17 years ago

These guys had all of the PR a new company could ask for, and they completely fell on their face. While I'd love to see more competition in the search space, I think the hill is even steeper this time for Cuil. Their name could use some work too.

tokenadult2• 17 years ago

Their name could use some work too.

Yes, I can't even keep track of what the canonical pronunciation of "Cuil" is. I know that the company doesn't want us to think "epic fail" when we see "Cuil," but that's what usually happens for me.

tokenadult2• 17 years ago

"'Statistics show that people, especially young people, are much, much more likely to click on a URL if they see it in a blog or Tweet from someone they trust. This clearly has a big impact on Web marketing and is leading a number of companies to develop tools to track and target these social influencers,' he says. 'But whether it will really jive with search isn't as clear to me.'"

I wonder how those statistics are gathered? I am indeed much more likely to follow a link if a friend recommends the link. (For this purpose, "friend" on HN would mean person with high karma who has reliably recommended good links before, if the domain of the link is unfamiliar to me. I'm very chary about following unfamiliar links to unfamiliar domains unless a closer friend, someone I know from an email list ideally, recommends the link.) But I do still follow links from Google, because I count on Google to filter out nefarious links with spyware or malware. It's still not clear to me why I would even start using Cuil again, after its epic fail at launch last year.

Scriptor• 17 years ago

Integrating social networks into search engines just sounds like something straight out of a web 2.0 idea generator. I don't see how this will be useful at all. I'm gonna make a guess that the kind of highly general searches this would be good for (like band names used in the article) is only a tiny portion of most actual searches. Even then, people might rather just ask their friends if they want this kind of information.

Another thing, the vast majority of links shared by my friends are hardly informative, maybe weird, funny, awesome, etc., but few people post stuff on Facebook like they would on HN. Without context, they will only clutter up the search.

iron_ball• 17 years ago

"jibe", not "jive". http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/jibe

While we're at it, "home in", not "hone in".

I am angry at language as used!

dtf• 17 years ago

Or, for those who aren't stingy with their particles: "hone in on" :-) Some interesting speculation on the origins: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000378.h...

natch• 17 years ago

There's that old joke that God tipped America on its side and all the loose screws slid to California. And then God tipped California on its side and all the loose screws slid to Marin County. And then God tipped Marin County on its side and all the loose screws slid to Bolinas. My kind of town.

Anyway, I wonder if there is a similar thing going on here with Cuil attracting clueless executives. Not to be mean piling on criticism after criticism on Cuil, but really, asking people to do anything that touches their social network is something you have to slowly work up to, with a process of building trust. It's not a switch you can just turn on overnight.

Or maybe they don't care about users. Maybe they just think the social buzzword will attract some needed investors.

wglb• 17 years ago

I'm sorry, but whenever I hear Cuil, i cannot get the cuil theory http://cuiltheory.wikidot.com/what-is-cuil-theory out of my head.

Additionally, when i hear the word 'leverage', I release the safety on my Browining.

froo2• 17 years ago

When I first decided to give Cuil a go, I did a broad search for my home city (Perth) who's population is about 1.65 million people (roughly).

I finally found a result on the 3rd page of Cuil (towards the end), with the first 2 pages being dominated by some Perth in Scotland who's population is several orders of magnitude smaller (and is officially classified as a "town")

In fact, it's population is so much smaller, our stadiums contain more people in them during average sporting events.

Does not compute.

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea that they want to create a new search engine. I even like the idea that they want to take on Google but come on guys. When your highly publicised search engine gets its ass kicked by a stock installation of Lucene, you're doing it wrong.

timcederman2• 17 years ago

Hi froo. As a fellow Aussie, please do me a favour and stop such rampant apostrophe abuse. Thank you.

jacquesm• 17 years ago

Cuil should do less PR and more coding.

They have good ideas but a service that simply doesn't compare to even the smallest competitors in the same space.

For one heck of a hack check out http://gigablast.com , one guy and a couple of years of work.

hwijaya• 17 years ago

Totally agree with you here. I wonder if any of the management team read Steve Blank's "Four Steps to the Epiphany" book. Cuil sounds like the exact example being outlined there.

froo2• 17 years ago

Perhaps they could rejig some of the algorithms used for Cuil ranking as a defensive measure, just in case robots ever decide to rise up against us.

Think of it, just like Tic Tac Toe was used to confuse WOPR in Wargames, a simple search on Cuil for anything could be used to confuse any Skynet wannabes.

We make fun of these guys now, but they could be unrealised geniuses.

I salute you Cuil, in the fight against future robot overlords.

paraschopra• 17 years ago

Even though I risk being downvoted, I am amused by froo's imagination. I hope HNers agree that probability of this happening is non-zero, no matter how small

vegashacker• 17 years ago

This actually sounds like an interesting idea to me. Most of the time, I suspect, my search results don't need data from my social network to improve. But occasionally social data might be highly relevant. And so if my search results are Google quality most of the time, and even better (due to social network hits) a small percentage of the time, Cuil may totally rock.

I also like how this isn't a social network search engine. It's an extension of normal search. I can't imagine myself (at least today) sending a separate query to my social networks. But obviously I query a normal search engine all the time.

I wonder if they will run into Terms of Use issues with Facebook et al. In order to search efficiently, they'll need to store social network data...

omarish• 17 years ago

I think it was disadvantageous that they tried to make such a big fuss out of their technology early on. They could have been a bit more stealthy, see what works, and then scale up; that's probably why luck tends to favor the quiet guys over the loud ones.

jackdawjack• 17 years ago

A little off topic but i can't get over that damn name, i read it as "cul" which is, by my shoddy translation, french for ass-hole. "Va mis en cul!" And from its performance that's actually pretty sound advice.

Flemlord• 17 years ago

Again?

Cuil Tries to Rise Again

Related Stories