Last week, I read an article on CNN.com that mentioned a new search engine joining the fray. The new search engine, Cuil (pronounced ‘cool’) had received $30 mil in venture capital and was being led by a former Google executive, or some such.
After reading the article, I went over to cuil.com and started doing a couple searches. I was less than impressed with the results provided by my initial searches — the results were not really similar to (or as relevant as) those returned by Google. I was also less than impressed with the way the results were displayed as I found the multi-column layout to much less easy to scan and figure out if the results were what I was looking for (vs. the single column, organized layout that Google, Yahoo, MSN provide).
I like the idea of competition for Google, but at the same time, I’m not convinced that Cuil is in a place to be that competition. Cuil definitely needs some work (and for their results to make sense to me before I would ever consider switching) and in reality, “google” is so synonymous with “searching” that I think it will be a hard, uphill battle to sway searchers away from the beast that is Google.
Only time will tell, but for now, Google remains well ahead in round one.
