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Ex-Google engineers debut 'Cuil' way to search

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Re: Ex-Google engineers debut 'Cuil' way to search

#61

Post by parenthesis »

It seems to me that a way to potentially creep up on google would be to make a specialist search engine. Some topic area that google is not so useful for searching on. Make a search system that 'understands' the domain in question, allowing it to index and search it really effectively.

As a random example, say, a movies search engine. If it could be consistently more useful than google for finding out information about movies, directors, actors, the movie industry etc., then it could become the 'go to' tool for movie search. Potentially, this success could then be leveraged to move into other areas of search.

Re: Ex-Google engineers debut 'Cuil' way to search

#62

Post by snorkel »

HendrikR wrote: post #49

Looks as though as it's closed temporarily: "We’ll be back soon... Due to overwhelming interest, our Cuil servers are running a bit hot right now. The search engine is momentarily unavailable as we add more capacity. Thanks for your patience."

Now it's not responding at all. Don't sell your Google stock just yet.

Re: Ex-Google engineers debut 'Cuil' way to search

#63

Post by softwarejim »

marijn wrote: post #29
kleevr wrote: post #8

At least Cuil has some respect for privacy: "We do not keep logs of our users’ search activity." "We analyze the Web, not our users. Read our Privacy Policy for details. It’s short." http://www.cuil.com/info/privacy/

Exactly. I've seen some Google ads that were a bit too targeted lately -- related to stuff that I searched for last week -- and it is getting spooky. I'd like to have a decent alternative. Maybe I should just get used to Yahoo, but this looks hipper, no? That being said, they haven't indexed my site yet. Amateurs!

what I find shady is that its against the law to spoof your competitors domain name, but google will allow you to display ads for when people search for your competitor.

thats a little underhanded if you ask me

Re: Ex-Google engineers debut 'Cuil' way to search

#64

Post by jrockway »

nailer wrote: post #60
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.

I search for python pretty regularly on Google. My recent, logged-in, searches for 'python gecko' resulted in a bunch of reptile sellers.

I search for programming-related things, and all but two results (both videos) for "python gecko" are about Mozilla bindings for Python.

Basically, I am not upset that Google profiles me. I would get upset when my profile is admissible as evidence against me in court, but that's not up to Google. Let's not make searching the web difficult because our legal system is fucked up. Let's fix the legal system.

Re: Ex-Google engineers debut 'Cuil' way to search

#65

Post by iamelgringo »

snorkel wrote: post #62
HendrikR wrote: post #49

Looks as though as it's closed temporarily: "We’ll be back soon... Due to overwhelming interest, our Cuil servers are running a bit hot right now. The search engine is momentarily unavailable as we add more capacity. Thanks for your patience."

Now it's not responding at all. Don't sell your Google stock just yet.

They did just launch. I'm sure they still have a few bugs to work out.

Re: Ex-Google engineers debut 'Cuil' way to search

#66

Post by iamelgringo »

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…

They don't have to beat Google, they just have to be good enough to get picked up by Microsoft.

Re: Ex-Google engineers debut 'Cuil' way to search

#69

Post by gcv »

gaius wrote: post #53
axod wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course. But googol isn't the 'expected/intuitive' spelling.

Any product that you have to explain to the user how to pronounce will fail. I looked at the word and my first thought was "how do you say that" - you don't win people over by making them feel stupid.

Don't overgeneralize. Consider "Audi." While obvious to a German speaker, an English speaker who has never heard the word before will wonder if it should be "oh-DI," "OH-di," "OW-di," or "ow-DI?"

I think Cuil is a decent name, far better than Srchr or some other Web 2.0 contraction. If it overcomes its growing pains and solves all the hard problems involved in search, it'll do well.

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