Search site aims to rival Google ( Called Cuil, from the Gaelic for knowledge and hazel, )

BBC ^ | Monday, 28 July 2008 12:33 UK 11:33 GMT, | BBC Staff

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Search site aims to rival Google

The Cuil homepage is even more sparse than Google's

Former workers at the web giant Google have launched a rival search engine.

Called Cuil, from the Gaelic for knowledge and hazel, its founders claim it does a better and more comprehensive job of indexing information online.

The technology it uses to index the web can understand the context surrounding each page and the concepts driving search requests, say the founders.

But analysts believe the new search engine, like many others, will struggle to match and defeat Google.

Hard fight

Cuil, pronounced "cool", says it uses more than 120 billion webpages to build up its index of the information it finds on the web.

It claims this is more than Google uses though the search giant has stopped reporting how much it indexes. Without revealing numbers Google claimed its index was still bigger.

The founders of Cuill are former Google engineers and they obviously have a fiercely competitive attitude to their former mother-ship Rory Cellan-Jones BBC technology correspondent Read Dot.life blog

Cuil claims that its technology moves away from the methods that have driven Google's success.

Instead of just looking at the number and quality of links to and from a webpage as Google's technology does, Cuil attempts to understand more about the information on a page and the terms people use to search. Results are displayed in a magazine format rather than a list.

The company is also trying to set itself apart from Google by not retaining any information about what people search for.

Cuil founders, Anna Patterson, Russell Power and Louis Monier are former Google staffers. The other founder Tom Patterson worked for IBM and others on search and storage technologies.

By declaring its aim of taking on Google, Cuil joins a long list of others that have tried and largely failed to dent the search giant's market share. Other contenders include Teoma, Vivisimo, Snap, Mahalo and Powerset.

"The time may be right for a challenger," said Danny Sullivan, editor in chief of Search Engine Land. "Competing with Google is still a very daunting task, as Microsoft will tell you."

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

fyi

[mnehrling]

I've been trying out Cuil and so far, I am not impressed. While the layout is nice, the results are far from the quality you get on other sites. Sometimes, the same result displays on several pages. The images shown with the results are also most of the time, unrelated to the result it is sitting next to.

Maybe as their bots crawl more sites it will improve, but right now, it is somewhat useless.

[daku]

I’ve used it a dozen times today and has two things going for it ...

it works fine
it isn’t google

[libbylu]

I agree,have used it 5-6 times and it did want i needed.

[dragonblustar]

I tried to look up Free Republic. Interesting what it brought up.

[astyanax]

Thanks for the info, I’ll give it a try.
Gave up google a long time ago (after the holidays and blog links flaps,) mainly use dogpile now.
Always looking for another source of info!

[the_devils_advocate_666]

I would say they have a long way to go. I searched “West Virginia Running” and “West Virginia Biking” and both returned no results. Worthless.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

They have a checkbox to add to Firefox search engines

AND

They have a safe Search......

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

They have a lot of work ahead of them...

[jeffc]

just checked them. Servers are overloaded - they’re down!

[MDspinboyredux]

Not a good start!

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

From Druge and Breit bart:

Ex-Google engineers debut 'Cuil' way to search

**************************EXCERPT********************

Cuil had kept a low profile while Patterson, her husband, Tom Costello, and two other former Google engineers—Russell Power and Louis Monier—searched for better ways to search.

Now, it's boasting time.

For starters, Cuil's search index spans 120 billion Web pages.

Patterson believes that's at least three times the size of Google's index, although there is no way to know for certain. Google stopped publicly quantifying its index's breadth nearly three years ago when the catalog spanned 8.2 billion Web pages.

Cuil won't divulge the formula it has developed to cover a wider swath of the Web with far fewer computers than Google. And Google isn't ceding the point: Spokeswoman Katie Watson said her company still believes its index is the largest.

After getting inquiries about Cuil, Google asserted on its blog Friday that it regularly scans through 1 trillion unique Web links. But Google said it doesn't index them all because they either point to similar content or would diminish the quality of its search results in some other way. The posting didn't quantify the size of Google's index.

[philled]

I hear you. It is now my default serach engine. We’ll see how it goes...

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Seem to be responding....

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

Regional radio host Schnitt tried this using his name. The first result he found was an article about him accompanied by a picture of Glen Beck. No idea why the two are connected.

[dajeeps]

Awesome that it isn’t Google. From quashing free speech in China (and possibly other places) to refusing to cooperate with the government regarding registered child rapists, Google has shown they are not a company worthy of my patronage.

I’ve been using Windows Live instead. It’s good enough and doesn’t result in the outwardly support of San Fransisco values.

It’s nice we have an option that has the potential to rival Google service that doesn’t have the liberal activist connotations with it. Of course, if they start playing liberal activist, I may rethink that and continue on with Windows Live.

[ShadowAce]

[sionnsar]

Search site aims to rival Google ( Called Cuil, from the Gaelic for knowledge and hazel, )

Huh? From my MacBain's and MacFarlanes':

(cùil), corner, recess, Ir. [cu/il], O.Ir. [cuil], W. [cil], [*ku^li-]. See [cùl], a wile, trick; from [cu\il]+[beart].
[cùil] nf. g.+e; pl.+tean, recess, corner, niche, nook, closet See cùl
[cùl] nm. g.v. cùil; pl. cùil, the back, the hinder part

(eòl), , knowledge, Ir. [eo/l], [eolas], E.Ir. [eo/las], O.Ir. [heulas] , [d-eulus]: [*ivo-lestu]?
[eòlas] nm. g.v. -ais; pl.+an, knowledge, acquaintanceship

(calltuinn), hazel, Ir. E.Ir. [coll], W. [collen], Cor. [coll-widen]. M.Br. [quel-vezenn], [*koslo-]; Lat. [corylus]; Norse [hasl], Eng. [hazel]. [*coll]+[tann].
[calltuinn] nm. hazel

[JDoutrider]

Good thing I did a search!

I was just going to post a link.

The best part of this search engine is just the fact it’s not Google. I HATE giving them hits... It’s like handing Obama a wad of cash, and I appreciate the opportunity to add this to my other than Google search sites!

[AnAmericanMother]

Hey, I'm chiming in with Dwelly's (the old and HUGE if completely antiquated dictionary) and MacLennan's - which basically says the same as MacBain's.

Hazel - as the third letter of the alphabet (a nice touch of Dwelly's) - is "Coll". He marks it as "obsolete". It can also mean "neck" or "destruction", but it doesn't mean "knowledge"! A "Cuil" without the accent mark, acc. to Dwelly, is short for "cuileag" and means "fly" - as in a housefly, or a fishing fly.

I get the idea that these characters don't actually SPEAK Gaelic . . . or even read it very well.

[sionnsar]

Thanks! I was at work and had only my electronic copies available.

[shorty_harris]

I use Scroogle.

[sionnsar]

Their website says: Cuil is an old Irish word for knowledge. For knowledge, ask Cuil.

Some sharp comments -- but I had to laugh a little at the post heading: our Gaelic society newletter is called "Am Bradan Fhiosa"

[free_life]

Scroggle is good. I like Alatvista and Dogpile

Google is part of the leftoid establishment and the enemy as far as I am concerned.

[free_life]

That’s Altavista

[AnAmericanMother]

Oh, yeah, and knowledge is "fios" - as in "tha fios agam" - I know.

When it's an obscure question, I always check Mr. Dwelly. The frontispiece - of the Great Man himself - alone is worth the price of admission!

[tubebender]

I tried it this morning and it didn't bring up my company website. My current search wagon is CLUSTY

[Tainan]

seems to be working pretty good now. I like their content rather than popularity perspective....by by google.

[HKMk23]

Scroggle is good. I like Alatvista and Dogpile

You might take Ms. Dewey for a spin, sometime.

[Babu]

I tried it — one thing I saw right away that I didn’t like: When you know the name of a website you want to go to, in Google, you can type: yadayada.com, and it will take you directly to the website. I tried that in Cuil, and it won’t take you there directly.

[steve-b]

Same here. It might get better, but for now it’s a mess.

[fkabuckeyesrule]

I just did my first search on cuil and of course my first search was ANN COULTER. I like it better than google for sure.

[Revolting cat!]

Pronounced 'kew-ill'

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I think I tried that one too....Google seems to be pretty far ahead of anyone else just in the resources that they have working....