The Search Engine Wars ( In the News )

It's not often that a brand new search engine enters the fray against the super search giant Google. But that's what happened Monday, July 28, with the birth and arrival of Cuil (pronounced Cool ), the newest and, according to them, the largest search engine on the internet. Cuil indexes 122 billion web pages; at least that's their goal.

The awkwardly named Cuil is gaelic for knowledge according to founders Tom Costello and Anna Patterson. Cuil is a new business start up funded at the 33 million dollar level mostly by venture capital from Madrone Capital, Tugboat Ventures and Greylock Partners. The founders and their chief associates are all veterans of the search engine wars, having worked on Google's major search indexes, Ebay search, AltaVista and AltaVista's Babelfish ( their translation engine ). The founders believe their contribution to search is a focus on relevance and comprehensive content and not simply page counts. They argue their search results will be more meaningful to users. So far, that remains to be seen.

Announcements of Cuil and its taking on of Google heightened expectations of all trying to use Cuil Monday. Birth of the site was not without considerable pain. The site stalled, often froze, and when results were returned they were often irrelevant and sometimes even bizarre; hardly a notable beginning for a major search engine. The initial response was overwhelming. There were an estimated 50 million hits the first day. Servers had to be upgraded right away to accept the traffic. Inc Magazine staff blogger, Jason Del Rey, reported that a search for "Inc Magazine" could not find its web site ("site not found"). By the time of this posting Inc Magazine returns the correct results, although there are still problems; many of the results are not relevant.

Search results still leave a lot to be desired. We tried searching "fannie mae", knowing that Congress and the President had signed new legislation ostensibly propping up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Cuil's "relevancy" search only returned the Fannie Mae home page, but no news about Fannie Mae or the crisis it was undergoing on a daily basis in the stock market, housing market, or in Congress. Indeed, the results were the "public" face of Fannie Mae on which there was little or no news about what it was going through. In other words if you wanted to know "about Fannie Mae" and its context and problems, you could not find that through Cuil. Hence no knowledge! A Google search on "fannie mae" returned in depth information about the company and what was happening to it. So much for Cuil's "comprehensive" search capacity.

Google has not become the gold standard of search by sitting on its laurels. Throughout the years it has put considerable effort into bettering and expanding its search capacity. But Cuil has identified vulnerability in Google and its data collection sometimes invasive approach. For example Cuil guarantees a non invasive privacy policy, focusing on the search not the searcher. But it will have to get much better in returning relevant search results before it can be considered a first rate contender with Google. Right now it can't be considered a first stop for search. It is a start up with lots of growing pains to be gotten through quickly if it is to be a contender. Beyond search it will have to work on its business model to develop a strong revenue base. Cuil has much talent and promise. It will be worth watching as will be Google's response.

For books on Google and its significance see David A Vise's The Google Story, John Battelle's The Search: How Google and its rivals rewrote the rules of business and transformed our culture, and Building Your Business With Google For Dummies by Brad Hill, all available at the Berkshire Athenaeum or your local library.