Former Google staff launch rival search engine Cuil

by Jacquie Bowser, Brand Republic 29-Jul-08, 08:30

LONDON - Former Google staff have launched a rival search engine that claims to index three times as many web pages as any other search engine.

Cuil, pronounced "cool", uses about 120bn web pages to create its index of information. The site's founders claim that this is more than Google uses, however, Google has stopped reporting how many it indexes.

Cuil's search technology ranks results by the content on each webpage, not by its popularity.

It then organises similar search results into groups and sorts them by category. The results are displayed in a magazine-style format, rather than a list.

Cuil's technology was developed by a team led by husband-and-wife duo Tom Costello and Anna Patterson. Costello previously researched and developed search engines at Stanford University and IBM, while Patterson worked for Google.

Russell Power, Patterson’s former colleague from Google, is also a co-founder of Cuil.

Costello, chief executive and co-founder of Cuil, said: "The web continues to grow at a fantastic rate and other search engines are unable to keep up with it.

"Our significant breakthroughs in search technology have enabled us to index much more of the internet, placing nearly the entire web at the fingertips of every user.

Unlike Google, Cuil does not keep any personally identifiable information on users or their search histories. Due to the site's search method, personal data collection is unnecessary.

Cuil is Gaelic word meaning knowledge and in looks the site is almost the polar opposite of Google. using a black background with grey and blue colours.

Comments

James Bent - 29/07/2008

Yet another search engine? I will keep on surfing with my old one, Google powered www.treehoo.com that provides excellent search results and plants trees for most of the profit. Making it easy for me to fight global warming and climate change!

Sarah Lambe - 29/07/2008

Gave it a try and will not be back. Brings up loads of results, but unfortunately they're mostly irrelevant and useless. Quite like the format, but who cares what it looks like if it doesn't work! It couldn't cope with searching for more than one word - just brought up gibberish/random results.

chris lapworth - 29/07/2008

Just tried it - Absolutely shocking! Typed in by business name - half the pictures that appeared next to it have nothing to do with my company and definitely don't feature on my website! In fact a number of results (including one for my own site) had my main competitor's logo next to it. Surely there is a brand control/protection issue here?!