Yep, another “I’m going to be better than Google” site has popped up. According to a Wired.com article ‘Cuil’ “Anna Patterson’s last Internet search engine was so impressive that industry leader Google Inc. bought the technology in 2004 to upgrade its own system.
She believes her latest invention is even more valuable — only this time it’s not for sale.
Patterson instead intends to upstage Google, which she quit in 2006 to develop a more comprehensive and efficient way to scour the Internet.
The end result is Cuil, pronounced “cool.” Backed by $33 million in venture capital, the search engine plans to begin processing requests for the first time Monday.
Cuil had kept a low profile while Patterson, her husband, Tom Costello, and two other former Google engineers — Russell Power and Louis Monier — searched for better ways to search.
Now, it’s boasting time.
For starters, Cuil’s search index spans 120 billion Web pages.”
… well then. Now, according to the article, today is the first day of availability, but, let’s give it a test. I put my last name in, and I even have a domain registered for it. That didn’t even come up. My twitter account shows, followed by an obituary for a couple dead relatives, and a few other things. Then there are two sites that come up that appear to be completely unrelated. (the reason I know they’re unrelated is this — per all my research, and knowing my family history, we are the only family to have this last name — anywhere.)
The site is nifty looking, polished, but, also slow and appears to be inaccurate. Granted, this is a new engine, and those do take time to ‘learn’, but I have to agree with a quote in the article for now: “I doubt (Cuil) will be keeping anyone at Google awake at night.”