Can Cuil kill Google? Not yet

The new search engine has its perks, but so far, it falls short.

Published July 29, 2008 1:00PM (EDT)

The new search engine Cuil launched Monday. Stories about it point out pluses like the size of its massive index (120 billion Web pages) and minuses like fewer total hits than what Google turns up when searching the same thing.

I can’t say what I think of Cuil until I spend more time using it, but I can tell you what Cuil thought of me when I searched for myself to compare Cuil with Google.

First, Google, which turned up "about 12000" results, with my blog JOEyGADGET appropriately topping the list (due in part to the fact that it's registered with Google's blog search service). Additional hits were reasonably timely and appropriate, including news of Boing Boing's serialization of my novel "The Deal."

My blog was the fifth and most timely item in the list of 10,924 results Cuil found on my behalf. The four hits above it were ancient as far as Web years go, and for some reason the Cuil result for the news of Boing Boing's serialization was paired with a thumbnail image of the 2005 film with the same name that starred Christian Slater. That "Deal" and mine bear no resemblance whatsoever, though the way Cuil displays search results in bite-size chunks bears more than a little resemblance to how the aptly named search toolbar add-on ChunkIt displays hits.

As with highway mileage and battery life, your results may vary, as will opinions about whether Cuil will be a hit in the business of delivering the most and most-accurate search hits. What do you think about Cuil? And for the fun of it, what does Cuil think about you? I'd love to hear your comments.


By Joe Hutsko

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