Ex-Google engineers debut 'Cuil' way to search

Anna Patterson's last Internet search engine was so impressive that industry leader Google Inc. (GOOG) (GOOG) 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.

Cuil had kept a low profile while Patterson, her husband, Tom Costello, and two other former Google engineers - Russell Power and Louis Monier - searched for better ways to search.

Now, it's boasting time.

For starters, Cuil's search index spans 120 billion Web pages.

Patterson believes that's at least three times the size of Google's index, although there is no way to know for certain. Google stopped publicly quantifying its index's breadth nearly three years ago when the catalog spanned 8.2 billion Web pages.

Read more here.
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Permalink Reply by Jim Canto on July 28, 2008 at 12:52pm

Thanks for the tip. I just checked them out. Things seemed to be quite "buggy" right now. Site behavior seemed ... well, unreliable at this time. Looks like they have plenty of commitment to their project and lots of brainpower. I'll be keeping my eye on them.

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Permalink Reply by Maureen Sharib on July 28, 2008 at 1:03pm

It's the brainpower thing that always intrigues me with these things...

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Permalink Reply by Cheryl on July 28, 2008 at 1:17pm

What excatly makes Cuil a better searching tool than Google? I'm always up for learning new tips and tricks! Being a headhunter means I'm always out there looking for the top talent my clients want!

Thanks for the heads up!
Cheryl
713-974-9060 x110

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Permalink Reply by snor on July 28, 2008 at 1:20pm

Its not about quanity for me, its quality of the results that matter. This is one of the reason's i think there is a great opportunity for vertical searches. the problem is that they are trying to be everything to everyone.

While i do use google, i would surely give it up for a vertical search or a list of vertical searches that offer more refined and niche information.

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Permalink Reply by pam claughton on July 28, 2008 at 1:46pm

Love the layout of search results...but my second two searches timed out...Cuil obviously can't handle the traffic...a bit surprising that they didn't plan better for that. Will keep an eye on this one though.

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Permalink Reply by Jim Canto on July 28, 2008 at 2:27pm

There's also some links within their site that are dead.... real obvious ones in the about section that..... with 33 million dollars in funding, I'd be hard pressed to think I'd let that mistake through. At that level.. it's like walking on stage with your shirt buttoned wrong. I was surprised.