A new search engine called Cuil has been getting a lot of buzz recently, and not, as you might expect, because it got punched in the mouth by Christian Bale. No, Cuil has been hailed by more than a few as a potential Google killer, the sort of bold statement that makes copy-hungry bloggers like myself stir slightly in our moist chairs.
The big buzz around Cuil is that some of its designers once worked for Google, and thus have detailed knowledge of the 11 herbs and spices that make Google’s search algorithm so effective and crispy. This is a pretty big deal - algorithms are the reason we all use Google instead of say, that butler thing. So having a couple Google-caliber geniuses build a new search engine has gotten a lot of very dull people get their panties into a very big twist. Will Cuil be as groundbreaking as Google was itself?
When Google showed up on the scene, search engines were terrible. For even the simplest queries you’d have to scroll through page after page of results to find what you were really looking for. But when Google invented itself (as I understand it) in 1998 it was light-years ahead of everything else around. I remember the first time I used Google, and how excited I was that it found exactly what I was looking for.
So what’s Cuil like in comparison? (here I assume you lack the skill-sets to test a search engine yourself) Well it’s exactly the same as every other non-Google search engine you’ve used, except the font’s a little smaller. Also there’s columns. Admittedly columns are a good idea, but not exactly a “Manhattan Project” scale breakthrough, or even a “quilted toilet paper” scale breakthrough.
More importantly, it turns out Cuil isn’t actually that good at searching yet. Try typing “wiki burgess meredith” into both Google and Cuil for example (if you haven’t already). This is pretty routine for Google, but Cuil doesn’t find anything even remotely useful. Hilariously, the first link it does find is for a Chinese wiki page for Rocky V with the following pull quote “Her character was shown to have ended up as Rocky predicted she would: a whore…”
There are reasons to be hopeful for Cuil however. With it’s stranglehold over the search market, Google can get away with some pretty iffy decisions. They’ve admitted to storing our individual search logs basically indefinitely, and only agreed to anonymize them at 18 months after much protest. These logs ostensibly are used to help them improve their software, but the thought of one company knowing so much about me and my interests is a little disquieting. So if Cuil, you know, manages to stop berating whores long enough to find what I’m looking for, I’d happily give it a chance.
On a side note, I think the name “Cuil” is the most calculated piece of horseshit I’ve ever heard of. It’s like they locked a guy in a room with a case of Red Bull and a bag full of Scrabble tiles and told him not to come out until he had a short, catchy sequence of letters that was almost but not quite a word.
Given similiar instructions, I wouldn’t have settled for anything less than Ssthinktar. Also maybe Def Leppard.
__
Edit: Heh. Just noticed this as I was finishing up.
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December 17th, 2008 at 9:59 am
It would seem that about 5 months on, Cuil is still shit. How the fuck do you even pronounce Cuil?!
It doesn’t even have an image search for chirst sake.
August 11th, 2008 at 7:37 am
I tried Cuilling cougarlove and got nothing. Sorry, spambot. You’re future looks not so bright.
August 6th, 2008 at 9:49 am
I strongly suggest you get more from the hot cougar dating club called Cougarlove.com, a nice and free place for Older Women and Younger Men to interact with each other. It’s fabulous.
August 5th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
It’s happening. Hide your potatos, lest they become sentient.
August 5th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
I don’t know if anyone’s mentioned this, but technically the word “cuil” would be phonetically pronounced “kwill” in Irish. The “u” doesn’t take an “oo” sound unless paired with a fada, as in “ú”. Fionn McCuil’s name is more correctly spelt “McCumhall,” and anyway “cuil” doesn’t mean knowledge. It means bottom or end, although the “i” is only necessary in plural.
As for Irish servers attempting to get us to download “Fields of Athenry” instead of Kings of Leon, it’s much worse than you think. I bought a copy of “Aha Shake Heartbreak” only to find a Daniel O’Donnell CD in its place. I shudder to think what horrors the new album will bring.
August 3rd, 2008 at 2:09 pm
If first impressions still matter on the internets then Cuil is a fool. My first search took over a minute to complete. Several valid searches didn’t turn up any results and other searches were weak at best.
I thought the idea of columns would be good but I didn’t find it useful. Google is apparently the wheel and doesn’t need to be reinvented just yet however I’m anxious for real competition to come their way.
With great power comes great flex of muscle. Imagine if you will a world where only one search engine is used. Image then that search engine decides your website is somehow illegitimate and they refuse to include your site in search results. In my case I was only banned from using Google Adwords. Their decision is clearly a mistake due to a mistake I made listing keywords but they have left me with no recourse other than to hope a site like Cuil succeeds.
I should say I did like the images that are included with the Cuil search but that’s probably the reason it’s so slow and you just can’t expect to compete at all if you can’t get the speed right.
August 3rd, 2008 at 1:44 am
turjkish:
Actually if you were to Google it you would learn cuil does not mean knowledge. It means corner. And they sure as hell aren’t going to corner the market. Plus they were originally planning on it calling it cuill so the Gaelic aspect, even if it was true, wouldn’t have been intentional.
August 2nd, 2008 at 12:25 pm
does it have image searching? i dont know, im too slow to find it. IMAGES PLEASE
August 2nd, 2008 at 12:24 pm
cool. cuil. i dont think it will make it big though, the country’s too retarded to try and pronounce cuil.
August 1st, 2008 at 3:04 pm
I tried “clown sex” and the first page -top left ist the first hit, or am i wrong? was a link to an organzitation against clown pron? that doesn’t make sense.
August 1st, 2008 at 10:13 am
http://www.howdoigetmyheadoutofthisthing.com
Duh…
August 1st, 2008 at 9:20 am
One good thing cuil is hoping to introduce is a more intelligent search engine. Whereas if you type in a question like “How do I get my head out of this thing?” search engines will only bring up sites with those words in, where as cuil aims to be able to take that question and find the answer then produce pages with the relevant answer like “you’ll need a screwdriver, you dick.”
August 1st, 2008 at 5:50 am
Gaelic isn’t exclusively Irish, Gaelic Irish is Irish, Gaelic is in the north of Scotland, they’re not the same dialect.
July 31st, 2008 at 10:28 pm
By Irish do you mean Gaelic?
July 31st, 2008 at 9:57 pm
Don’t “Culi’s” wear funny hats, smoke opium and drive railroad spikes for shitty wages?
July 31st, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Also, culi.com is not quite as innocent as goggle.com
July 31st, 2008 at 3:58 pm
@turjkish: If they did, the answer would, invariably, be yes.
July 31st, 2008 at 9:11 am
I see one reason Cuil may not be the next big thing; a whole bunch of people are mispelling it. Culi? It’ll be the next http://www.goggle.com
July 31st, 2008 at 7:09 am
Well there were 285,000 hits for just one Windows error, if you type in windows and error you get about 16,000,000 hits.
July 31st, 2008 at 3:02 am
how is it an epic fail for windows?
July 31st, 2008 at 12:31 am
Cuil officially sucks and needs some serious work.
I was working on someones computer and kept getting an error message and what I was doing wasn’t fixing it. So instead of googling the message I thought “hey I’ll use cuil and see what I get. Typed in Windows error message blah blah blah and received not one single hit, not one.
Went to google and got 285,000 hits. Epic fail for cuil and Windows, when you think about it really and I like Windows.
July 30th, 2008 at 7:17 pm
culi is because it is cool.
Google=googol or a 1 with 100 zeroes behind it.
Google’s HQ= The Googoloplex
which is a 1 with a googol zeroes behind it.
July 30th, 2008 at 11:31 am
I just googled culi, it came right up, it was great.
http://www.onblastatlast.com has a story about McDonalds Grimis being charged with some sex crime, it’s hilarious.
hyde
July 30th, 2008 at 11:05 am
I think the main, existential question we should be asking ourselves is, in two years will we all be “Googling” on Cuil, or “Cuiling” on Google. Initial observations are that Google lends itself better to the verb form.
July 30th, 2008 at 8:36 am
Jello filled pool, goddamn American suburbanites and your debauchery, I have to settle for a plain old Bourbon filled bathtub.
Oh, and I pronounced Cuil as Quill or Quell as well. As someone who speaks a little Gaelic I’d think that was the way to go.
July 30th, 2008 at 8:33 am
This is a jello filled pool so it works well.
July 30th, 2008 at 8:03 am
“Fucking swimming pool equipment?”
Water and natural lubrication kind of cancel each other out… oh, now I understand the need for the “equipment.” Alternately, you could just fill your entire pool with KY Jelly instead of water.
That would be awesome.
I pronounce Cuil like quill.
July 30th, 2008 at 7:35 am
No, it was fucking swimming pool equipment and I shouldn’t bitch because A. I’m bitching about a luxury B. what I paid was cheaper, not by much, than what I would have paid at the store here in town.
but, If something is listed at .99, no reserve, why in the fuck would you want to make your first bid $200.00 not, you know, fucking $2.00?
I’ll tell you why, these people that have these so called ebay stores have somebody bidding for them so the get the amount they want. This is suppose to be against the rules , but it is almost every fucking thing that has been listed like that to start with. I watched this happen with stuff over and over for months. This is mostly with the new shit, not used.
Fucking cheating assholes.
July 30th, 2008 at 7:21 am
I didn’t know all that about Google; I regret trying “Miley Cyrus” and “cum in hair” now.
Bacon boobie cocaine titties? Now, there’s a product to cure overpopulation. We could even label it “0 grams/trans fat” and sell it as heart-smart. I smell a nobel prize.
WOC; does this mean they’re all related? That would explain a lot.
July 30th, 2008 at 6:49 am
Is it meant to be pronounced like KEWL? Cos that will make me not ever even look at it. As much as I hate Google reading my emails and storing my info and watching me through my webcam….. *waves* ….
July 30th, 2008 at 3:47 am
Man, they must have swindled you bad.
It was the R2D2 projector wasn’t it? That’s the sort of thing that needs to be bought wholesale or from the grasp of a sweaty nerd via a small ad.
July 30th, 2008 at 1:53 am
Have I mentioned today how much I hate the cheating, crooked fucks on ebay?
July 30th, 2008 at 12:37 am
bucholtz, right now your the runt of the Cracked bloggers litter, but your finally starting to fight your way to your mothers teet and get some more milk.
before hating on the name, try typing cuil a couple of times. Feels good dosnt it? the nicely positioned I U and L….culiculiculiculiculi
July 30th, 2008 at 12:16 am
When I first saw the name “cuil” written, I hated it. When I heard it was supposed to be pronounced “cool” I thought “Fuck you, that’s not how it’s pronounced and I refuse to even look at your shitty website.” Am I alone in this?
July 29th, 2008 at 11:14 pm
well you could combine you’re work with kingmoney+1’s work on developing cocain titties.
bacon boobie cocain titties anyone?
July 29th, 2008 at 8:45 pm
Ross, were you over there trying to get some “bacon boobies” like Glendoor? I must admit, combining two of my favorite things would rock. Except once you eat the boobie, you have no more boobie. Hmmm. Back to the lab again, Yo.
July 29th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Who says that’s a stereotype? I’ve been threatened that way many a time by an irish pig farmer.
July 29th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
Or maybe it’s because ‘Chronicles of Riddick’ sucked?
July 29th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
I looked for ‘Chronicles of Riddick’. Two pages no imdb page came up. I looked for ‘Chronicles of Riddick imdb’. No imdb pages again. I looked for ‘IMDB’. No Imdb pages came upon the first page. I looked for ‘Chronicles of Riddick’ again. The first page was full of italian.imdb pages. I looked for ‘Chronicles of Riddick IMDB’. The first link was the imdb page for the movie. I don’t know if it is trying to learn from my searches what I am looking for, but I thought that was strange.
July 29th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Yea right, the new google killer. Only George Bush would have sold his GOOG stock for that one. All hype.
July 29th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
I like bacon. boobies
July 29th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
In the universial language once spoken a long, long time again (proto-indo-european), cuil was a verb meaning “the act of intercourse.”
I’m just kidding, I just wanted to sound smart like all the other know-it-alls and bull shitters.
July 29th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
Mmmmm, naked burgess.
Also, Cuil means fly in irish as well. not fly the verb, but fly the thing that hovers around britney these days.
July 29th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
The name will kill it. Google’s name is more fuerte. I’m reading a business book on divergence in branding, and according to it, Cuil will die in flames and I will inherit their vast wealths.
July 29th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Or alternately, you could just hover over the link and see what it is before clicking.
On that note, apparently, naked Burgess Meredith is entirely acceptable here at my office. We printed him out and posted him on the wall.
July 29th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
Please dont link to nude pic googling!. some of us are at work and will make notes not to visit your blog again!.
July 29th, 2008 at 11:55 am
My dad always insists that dogpile is the best. I pretty well stick to google. Google reader, gmail, google’s got it all baby!
July 29th, 2008 at 11:05 am
what the hell is lycos? you casnadians and your rediculous interwebz.
yeah if cuil could actually produce results I think I would used it. I kind of like the layout.
oh and 11th.
July 29th, 2008 at 10:49 am
No one uses Lycos anymore?
July 29th, 2008 at 10:48 am
I support Cuil, if for no other reason than because I’m launching a pretty heavy anti-Google campaign.
I am sick of those fuckers, and I’m taking them down.
July 29th, 2008 at 10:40 am
Well Ross, if we were to pander to stereotypes, wouldn’t google ask if you want “cheese with that” after every search?
July 29th, 2008 at 9:14 am
Is it Miller time over there in Scotland Ross?
July 29th, 2008 at 8:56 am
“Cuil” kind of reminds me of male pigs (we’ve a word for them that sounds similarly)
July 29th, 2008 at 8:47 am
I don’t think anything called Cuil would be good for downloading torrent files unless it’s Irish rebel music.
You just want to download Kings of Leon it constantly wants to download Fields of Athenray, then you get browser messages asking you who the fuck you’re talking to. Aye you, fucking poofter, step away from the screen and we’ll have a figh’.
You don’ make me search nothin’ ya Cromwell lovin’ faggot.
July 29th, 2008 at 8:42 am
I did find a new torrent site with cuil.
July 29th, 2008 at 8:35 am
I thought the point of the name “cuil” was that it was supposed to be pronounced like “cool,” not that the maker people happened to google irish words for things.
…but the site’s pretty much useless though
July 29th, 2008 at 8:20 am
Cuil is an Irish word. It means wisdom or knowledge. You might have googled that.
July 29th, 2008 at 8:16 am
Almost first!