Jul.28.2008 Cuil.com is your new Google

If you want to believe CNN.com, Cuil.com (pronounced “cool”, which makes sense if you like to pronounce things in different ways than they’re spelled) is your official Next Big Internet Thing.

Enjoy the adorable cat pic because, believe me, you don’t want to see a picture of Cuil founder Anna Patterson

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.

Only problem is, it sucks.

Google challenger Cuil launched last night in blaze of glory. And it went down in a ball of flames. Immediately after launch, the criticism started to pile on: results were incomplete, weird, and missing.

I talked with Cuil VP of communications Vince Sollitto this morning about the launch issues. CEO Tom Costello was “busy putting out fires,” Solitto said.

Sollitto said there were two issues affecting Cuil search quality currently. First, he said, “We are trying to give people different results.” Cuil is pitched as an alternative to traditional search engines, and users should not expect the results to be the same.

Fair enough, I said, but there’s a difference between alternative and wrong. Which brings us to issue two: “We’ve only been live for twelve hours,” Sollitto said, and traffic has spiked beyond their expectations. In other Web 2.0 launches, a traffic spike would slow down or crash the service, but in Cuil’s architecture, the spike affected results, not speed. (Cuil did also crash briefly last night.)

This was my experience too. After checking the site out today, a search for “jews” yielded a “No results” page (which I find hard to believe since they control the media…unless this is part of their end game. DAMN YOU JEWSSSS). Then, a search for “blog of hilarity” yielded a bunch of tangential shit but not this actual site. So…that’s not really helpful.

Now I’m no tech guy and I assume most of my readers aren’t too, so here’s a simpler way of thinking of it: It’s kind of like if I was working at GM and was like “Hey, I can make a better car!” Then I left, worked hard to develop a car for years. After development closed, I told a reporter, “I worked at GM, check out my hot new car.” Then, after some persuasion, he agreed. I give him a tour of our facilities, talk about what my new car can do, how it’s going to change society, why it’s better than GM, etc. Then, I threw him into a pile of feces and danced around while singing “Danny Boy”. That was how I felt when using Cuil.

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