The next Google? - Play Things

The next Google?

Sidin Vadukut - Monday, July 28, 2008 5:05 PM

Yes. What a desperate-for-traffic headline that is?

But tis true. The internets are ablaze with rumours of a new competitor Google that may finally not go bankrupt a few minutes after the press conference.

This is what Webware has to say:

There's a big new search engine launching Monday: Cuil. Developed and run by the husband-and-wife team of Stanford professor Tom Costello and former Google search architect Anna Patterson, it's pitched as bigger, faster, and better than Google's flagship search engine in pretty much every way.

However I must immediately say that I have seen a number of Google-wannabes sprout up over the last many years and sink without trace shortly thereafter. For instance there was Alltheweb that promised to be bigger than Google (more pages, or more links or more something or the other). All to no avail. Alltheweb is now a part of Yahoo by the look of things.

I gave Cuil (pronounced "Cool") a trial and the results were pretty pathetic. Way off target in terms of accuracy and relevance. Comments on the Webware post seem to share that view:

Extremely poor search results. Some queries got "no results" when same query
on Google got over a million hits.

Google could use some competition. Competition. With a capital C. Cuil is currently way short of making anyone at the Googleplex call emergency meetings. Perhaps they (Cuil) will get better with time.

But perhaps they won't.

I am a committed Googler. What your favourite/secret/embarassing search engine of choice?

Share this post: email it! | del.icio.us! | digg it! | newsVine!

From Kaushik

July 29, 2008 7:12 PM
Thank god for Google. videos on metacafe.com

From Ruchi

July 30, 2008 2:13 PM
Hey i agree with you that CUIL has a long way to go but they have already managed to raise 33 million dollars from venture capitalists even before their search engine had launched. http://www.watblog.com/2008/07/28/ex-googlers-launch-cuilcom-they-claim-its-bigger-better-than-google/ Will have to wait and watch if all the moolah they got will really give competition to Google. Till then keep googling

From Udai

July 31, 2008 9:57 AM
Even though CUIL is better in terms of displaying results however the relevance of those results is way off the mark

From Namitha

July 31, 2008 4:33 PM
My favourite/secret/embarassing search engine IS Google!

From Abhay

August 2, 2008 5:58 AM
Cuil is a piece of *** (so far). Use it for more than a few minutes and you'll know. After getting used to the minimalism of Google, it is hard to get used to something like Cuil (a column display, what the heck for??). And the number of indexed pages being more than Google? I smell bullshit.

From Naveen

August 8, 2008 5:09 PM
I am a die-hard fan of Google. Cuil(I'm hearing this name for the first time i must say) or whatever it is that is out there right now has a long way to go before they can even think of outperforming Google. Come on people, i think we should be grateful to Google for offering us all their amazing products for free! I really hope tat someday they will come out with a free OS too.

From alltheweb

August 20, 2008 6:53 PM

Pingback from  alltheweb

From alltheweb com

September 10, 2008 7:27 AM

Pingback from  alltheweb com

POST YOUR COMMENT

:
(required)
 
Email Address
(required)
   
(optional)
(HTML not allowed)