Former Google staff launch rival search engine Cuil

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.