-- Posted Tuesday, 29 July 2008 | Digg This Article | Source: GoldSeek.com
Rick’s Picks
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
“Phenomenally accurate forecasts”
So much for Cuil (pronounced “cool”), a search engine that supposedly was going to give Google a run for the money. The brainchild of three ex-Google employees, Cuil debuted on Monday with a public relations drum roll and $33 million in venture backing. By late afternoon, however, the drum roll had segued into “Taps,” and it was back to the drawing board. In tests by an initially fawning press, not only did Cuil produce merely hum-drum search results for Barack Obama; after scanning a reported 120 billion Web pages, Cuil reportedly couldn’t find evidence that St. Louis, MO, even exists. The Obama search turned up mostly links to the candidate’s Web site – not exactly what you’d be looking for if you wanted varied information on the guy.
We always thought Google was overrated because of its vulnerability to competition from any upstart that comes along with a more powerful algorithm. But if $33 million in start-up capital can’t produce a search engine capable of finding St. Louis, then perhaps we were wrong. Cuil certainly looked the cocky upstart when the day began, and its launch was a headline item on the Web Monday morning, including on Google news pages. But the initial reviews were so atrocious that it may not be possible for Cuil to return to the market again under the same name. But who would know if the same bunch of promoters were to come along in two months with a re-engineered algorithm and a new name even cuiler than cuil? Meanwhile, with all the cuil stuff Google packages with its search engine, including 3-D photos taken from outer space of the homes we live in, a competitor may have to give away $100 bills, or free beer, to get users to switch.
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