July 28, 2008
All the Cuil Kids Are Doing It
The AP today reported on the launch of Cuil, a new search engine developed by some former Google engineers that is aiming to overtake Google as the dominant search engine on the Interwebs. We've done a few test searches and are feeling rather "eh" about it so far. The oh-so-important "Phillyist" search results: Google gives us the link to the Phillyist homepage at the top of the list, with other Phillyist-related sites below; Cuil, on the other hand, generates a bunch of individual Phillyist posts and tags, along with images that have nothing to do with the actual links as far as we can tell. We're sure there are still kinks to be worked out, but we're giving round 1 to Google. Readers, what do you think: Are you going to switch to Cuil, or are you sticking with ol' Google? Let us know in the comments.
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I checked it a littler earlier, searched my blog 'Phillybits', and out of the 10 initial results, only one of them linked back directly to my site.
Most everything else was a link to ticketslook.org/xx/xxxx/ (6 instances) and a handfull of other .biz sites.
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That new site violates my "no stupid names" code.
Plus, Google is at the top of the search engine game so I would see no reason to switch.
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I largely agree with you, Ang. But then, Yahoo was once at the top of the search engine game. And I guess Internet Explorer still is at the top of the web browser game, and I'm an avid Firefox user, so I'm not resisting Cuil on that basis.
It's obviously got some things to work out, but if it can eventually provide better functionality than Google, or challenge Google to do more with its own product, than I'm certainly not going to say Cuil is a bad thing.
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Maybe I'm getting old, but I just really prefer the all-text search you get on Google. Info in columns with pictures is, I think, a lot less user-friendly. Plus, it makes your brain play the "do I read this left to right, or up, then down, then over?" game.
Meanwhile, Cuil taught me that there's a Jillian Ivey Sidoti practicing law in California. Or perhaps I'm just leading a bicoastal double life. Nobody's ever seen us in the same room, after all.
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Hmmm, let's see, a Cuil search for "Jillian Ivey" gets me an incomprehensible mess, whereas a Google search gets me very easily decipherable results.
And as for the "other" Jillian Ivey, her website reminds me: Editor Jill, I think you should get a Glamour Shots-rrific photo for your staff bio.
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Wow. I have been needing a new photo for a while... Definitely something to think about!
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Thanks for blogging this, I didn't know there was another worthy competitor out there. I'll be checking this out!
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Eh. Google is a verb now. That to me cements its place as the permanent default search engine. I can't say "oh, let me cuil that." Also, I am a creature of habit, so I doubt I'll switch.