Ex-Google engineers debut 'Cuil' way to search

Post by gaius » Mon, Jul 28, 2008, 11:02 AM UTC

jmtame wrote: post #21

beaudeal wrote: post #5

first things first...am i the only person who wants to keep saying "kweel" and not "cool"?? in terms of the site itself, i am sort of liking the design / layout of the search, although like agotterer said, it still needs a lot of work -- from what i can tell, popular search terms have pretty darn good results but unpopular search terms return sub-par results (see his example haha)... in terms of a threat to google??…

The team is impressive, they've been involved in AltaVista, Google, and Ebay. And Anna seems pretty confident that Google isn't going to change, although one of the lead Google engineers came to speak at our school last semester and said that they change the algorithms hundreds of times each year. He said it's not uncommon that they tweak it several times a week. Maybe it's not going through drastic changes, and mayb…

Post by marcus » Mon, Jul 28, 2008, 11:24 AM UTC

gaius wrote: post #51

marcus wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you call it unproven? When I google for Python I get stuff related to programming because of my search history, when a zoologist looks for Pythons he'll see stuff related to snakes.

Because I don't know what algorithms Cuil are using, I can't say at this stage if they are able to deliver better search results than Google without personalization. Perhaps they're better at contextualization for example, and don't need to know what you did last time. I'm a Python programmer too and the first link I get from Google for 'python' is a Wikipedia article on the Delphic Oracle... Admittedly I have often…

Post by gaius » Mon, Jul 28, 2008, 11:39 AM UTC

marcus wrote: post #54

gaius wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I don't know what algorithms Cuil are using, I can't say at this stage if they are able to deliver better search results than Google without personalization. Perhaps they're better at contextualization for example, and don't need to know what you did last time. I'm a Python programmer too and the first link I get from Google for 'python' is a Wikipedia article on the Delphic Oracle... Admittedly I have often…

Context is always helpful and obviously should be used in addition to personal history and even override it, but if the query has little context, the only context you can get is from the users historical data. Personalization doesn't guarantee better results but it obviously improves results.

Post by volida » Mon, Jul 28, 2008, 12:46 PM UTC

Post by nailer » Mon, Jul 28, 2008, 12:52 PM UTC

marcus wrote: post #42

gaius wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Jo(e) User doesn't really care about that, he or she cares about search results. If (and admittedly this is unproven) Google can deliver better search results by logging and analyzing search activity to personalize results, then Cuil is already at a disadvantage.

How can you call it unproven? When I google for Python I get stuff related to programming because of my search history, when a zoologist looks for Pythons he'll see stuff related to snakes.