New Internet search engine launched

Published: 29 Jul 2008

A new technology company, led by husband-and-wife team Tom Costello and Anna Patterson, has launched a new search offering, www.Cuil.com.

Pronounced "Cool", the offering, according to the company, combines the biggest web index with content-based relevance methods, results organised by ideas, and complete user privacy.

The company's next generation approach to search is the result of proprietary breakthroughs in search architecture and ranking algorithms.

"Cuil (www.Cuil.com) has indexed 120 billion web pages, three times more than any other search engine," stated the company.

"The web continues to grow at a fantastic rate and other search engines are unable to keep up with it," said Tom Costello, CEO and co-founder of Cuil. "Our significant breakthroughs in search technology have enabled us to index much more of the Internet, placing nearly the entire web at the fingertips of every user. In addition, Cuil presents searchers with content-based results, not just popular ones, providing different and more insightful answers that illustrate the vastness and the variety of the web."

Features are as follows:

· Cuil has indexed 120 billion Web pages, 3x more than any other search engine.

· Organised results—Cuil's magazine-style layout separates results by subject and allows further search by concept or category.

· Different results—Unlike other search engines, Cuil ranks results by the content on each page, not its popularity.

· Complete privacy protection—Cuil does not keep any personally identifiable information on users or their search histories.

Cuil's technology was developed by a team, which already has substantial experience in search. Cuil's employees have extensive experience in search, having worked at Google, IBM, eBay, AltaVista, Stanford University, the Internet Archive and other technology companies and research centers.

Costello researched and developed search engines at Stanford University and IBM; Patterson has been associated with Google, where she was the architect of the company's large search index and led a web page ranking team.

Together with Russell Power, Anna's former colleague from Google, Cuil was founded. Cuil is located in Menlo Park, California and has received series A funding from Tugboat Ventures and Greylock Partners, and series B funding from Madrone Capital Partners.

Comments

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Viaje said on 29 Jul 08:

It would be good for the entire online world if Google had another strong competitor. But, after poking around the Cuil site, it looks as though the company pushed the product out the door too soon. The results are quirky -- sometimes very good and thorough, while other on unique phrases miss smaller web sites entirely.

The brand name "Cuil" -- pronounced "cool" -- seems a bad choice because there are no know languages that would naturally pronounce "cuil" as "cool", so the company's first task is to teach everybody how to say the name, which is not only impossible but a waste of marketing money and energy. However, the name "Google" seemed stupid at the time of launch.

The two or three column layout of search results is so different from other established search engines that it is likely to be replaced soon. If the search engine is really as powerful as claimed, there would be no need for cute presentations.

One of the most distracting features of Cuil is that results will have a thumbnail image that is evidently chosen at random from somewhere else on the web. The use of these thumbnail images is confusing.

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