9 ms·

Yuil vs. Cuil - The hack wins hands down...

40 points by mspeiser 18y ago

d0mine 18y ago
Showing relevant images is hard http://sampullara.appspot.com/yuil/search?q=cuil http://sampullara.appspot.com/yuil/search?q=cuil
- unalone 18y ago
  Cuil isn't a pulp fantasy hero? But it sounds SO much like one.
unalone 18y ago
Compared to Cuil, yes. But I still like the layout of Yahoo!'s normal search. Whose idea was it that stacked results didn't work for conveying amounts of information?
- joao 18y ago
  Stacked results are what work best. But Cuil had to make themselves look visually inovative, just to be considered 'diferent' from Google. If not journalists would say that they were equal to Google/Yahoo - no matter how better, or worse, the technology and search results. Even, as it is the case, the UI doesn't help the user.
  - unalone 18y ago
    I think the moral, then, is not "innovate visually for no reason." It's "don't pretend like you've got something that can compete with Google." :-)
spencerfry 18y ago
Wow! The results are 1,000 times better. Nice work, Sam.
- j2d2 18y ago
  Ahem... Nice work, Yahoo!
  - spencerfry 18y ago
    Fair enough. :) I can't wait to see more...
bartman 18y ago
Except for the semantic part...
IsaacSchlueter 18y ago
Nice, but the link should point to http://sampullara.appspot.com/yuil/ http://sampullara.appspot.com/yuil/ not http://laserlike.com/2008/07/30/yuil-vs-cuil/ http://laserlike.com/2008/07/30/yuil-vs-cuil/ From http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Please submit the original source. If a blog post reports on something they found on another site, submit the latter.
- beatty 18y ago
  I submitted http://sampullara.appspot.com/yuil/ http://sampullara.appspot.com/yuil/ earlier today, but HN seems to have deleted it (see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=262081 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=262081).
redorb 18y ago
this kinda stuff has to embarrass cuil, the results are better (yahoo) but still perhaps an engine like goog, Y! or MSN will by their indexing technology (that is supposedly cheaper)
- KirinDave 18y ago
  No, it doesn't. Cuill, like Powerset, is a new search engine still doing relevance and query reformulation tuning. It's a lot of work to get results as good as Google and Yahoo! deliver, and a large part of it is a massive body of training data to work with. People who think this should embarrass Cuill are profoundly missing the point. It's a technology demo to show, "Yes we can make a functional search engine and our technology is not smoke and rainbows". Powerset faced the same absurd criticism, and it was frustrating because people were so caught up in the search wars that they didn't see the product as its own entity.
  - mlinsey 18y ago
    I agree with you, but this is also why Cuill's enormous marketing push this week was such a bad idea, even though it was executed brilliantly. (what's the last startup that you remember that had an article about it in the New York Times on its launch day?)
  - asif 18y ago
    It's not very difficult to make a functional search engine. With the amount of resources cuil had, all you would have to do is provision a few thousand servers and deploy a nutch cluster on them. Then you pair random images with random search results. Voila, you have cuil. The criticism is duly applied as Cuil made the claim that they would be better than Google at the same game. Powerset never made such a claim. The people who criticized it didn't have an understanding about what it was actually trying to do.
    - KirinDave 18y ago
      > It's not very difficult to make a functional search engine. With the amount of resources cuil had, all you would have to do is provision a few thousand servers and deploy a nutch cluster on them. This is incredibly wrong. What Cuil has done is neither easy (in terms of effort) or trivial (in terms of overall accomplishment). Most people simply don't understand the incredible amount of infrastructure that goes into a search engine. Certainly I did not until being part of what Powerset did, and I was shocked. > Then you pair random images with random search results. Voila, you have cuil. I confess I am confused why they don't just turn the feature off. It's certainly not baked yet. > The criticism is duly applied as Cuil made the claim that they would be better than Google at the same game. They can be better than Google at the same game at some point in the future. Right now all they have is a faster index generator, which is obviously what they feel they need to pursue funding or acquisition. > Powerset never made such a claim. The people who criticized it didn't have an understanding about what it was actually trying to do. I am watching the same series of events I lived through with Powerset unfold for Cuill, and it is no more tolerable from the outside than the inside.
geuis 18y ago
I'm liking Yuil. It definitely passes my vanity search test that I commented on here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=258828 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=258828
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
mdemare 18y ago
Searching for my name returns my linked in profile as the first hit ... with a picture of Charles Nutter.
vaksel 18y ago
Cuil made the mistake of telling the user they found 0 results. Instead they should have used Cuil for main results, and then if nothing was found should have displayed Google or Yahoo results(probably Yahoo because of the whole Boss thing). That way at least half of your results would be relevant.
dominik 18y ago
Yuil's been taken down? Why?

40 points by mspeiser 18y ago

Showing relevant images is hard http://sampullara.appspot.com/yuil/search?q=cuil http://sampullara.appspot.com/yuil/search?q=cuil

unalone 18y ago
Cuil isn't a pulp fantasy hero? But it sounds SO much like one.

unalone 18y ago

Compared to Cuil, yes. But I still like the layout of Yahoo!'s normal search. Whose idea was it that stacked results didn't work for conveying amounts of information?

joao 18y ago
Stacked results are what work best. But Cuil had to make themselves look visually inovative, just to be considered 'diferent' from Google. If not journalists would say that they were equal to Google/Yahoo - no matter how better, or worse, the technology and search results. Even, as it is the case, the UI doesn't help the user.
- unalone 18y ago
  I think the moral, then, is not "innovate visually for no reason." It's "don't pretend like you've got something that can compete with Google." :-)

spencerfry 18y ago

Wow! The results are 1,000 times better. Nice work, Sam.

j2d2 18y ago
Ahem... Nice work, Yahoo!
- spencerfry 18y ago
  Fair enough. :) I can't wait to see more...

bartman 18y ago

Except for the semantic part...

IsaacSchlueter 18y ago

Nice, but the link should point to http://sampullara.appspot.com/yuil/ http://sampullara.appspot.com/yuil/ not http://laserlike.com/2008/07/30/yuil-vs-cuil/ http://laserlike.com/2008/07/30/yuil-vs-cuil/ From http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Please submit the original source. If a blog post reports on something they found on another site, submit the latter.

beatty 18y ago
I submitted http://sampullara.appspot.com/yuil/ http://sampullara.appspot.com/yuil/ earlier today, but HN seems to have deleted it (see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=262081 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=262081).

redorb 18y ago

this kinda stuff has to embarrass cuil, the results are better (yahoo) but still perhaps an engine like goog, Y! or MSN will by their indexing technology (that is supposedly cheaper)

KirinDave 18y ago
No, it doesn't. Cuill, like Powerset, is a new search engine still doing relevance and query reformulation tuning. It's a lot of work to get results as good as Google and Yahoo! deliver, and a large part of it is a massive body of training data to work with. People who think this should embarrass Cuill are profoundly missing the point. It's a technology demo to show, "Yes we can make a functional search engine and our technology is not smoke and rainbows". Powerset faced the same absurd criticism, and it was frustrating because people were so caught up in the search wars that they didn't see the product as its own entity.
- mlinsey 18y ago
  I agree with you, but this is also why Cuill's enormous marketing push this week was such a bad idea, even though it was executed brilliantly. (what's the last startup that you remember that had an article about it in the New York Times on its launch day?)
- asif 18y ago
  It's not very difficult to make a functional search engine. With the amount of resources cuil had, all you would have to do is provision a few thousand servers and deploy a nutch cluster on them. Then you pair random images with random search results. Voila, you have cuil. The criticism is duly applied as Cuil made the claim that they would be better than Google at the same game. Powerset never made such a claim. The people who criticized it didn't have an understanding about what it was actually trying to do.
  - KirinDave 18y ago
    > It's not very difficult to make a functional search engine. With the amount of resources cuil had, all you would have to do is provision a few thousand servers and deploy a nutch cluster on them. This is incredibly wrong. What Cuil has done is neither easy (in terms of effort) or trivial (in terms of overall accomplishment). Most people simply don't understand the incredible amount of infrastructure that goes into a search engine. Certainly I did not until being part of what Powerset did, and I was shocked. > Then you pair random images with random search results. Voila, you have cuil. I confess I am confused why they don't just turn the feature off. It's certainly not baked yet. > The criticism is duly applied as Cuil made the claim that they would be better than Google at the same game. They can be better than Google at the same game at some point in the future. Right now all they have is a faster index generator, which is obviously what they feel they need to pursue funding or acquisition. > Powerset never made such a claim. The people who criticized it didn't have an understanding about what it was actually trying to do. I am watching the same series of events I lived through with Powerset unfold for Cuill, and it is no more tolerable from the outside than the inside.

geuis 18y ago

I'm liking Yuil. It definitely passes my vanity search test that I commented on here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=258828 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=258828

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

mdemare 18y ago

Searching for my name returns my linked in profile as the first hit ... with a picture of Charles Nutter.

vaksel 18y ago

Cuil made the mistake of telling the user they found 0 results. Instead they should have used Cuil for main results, and then if nothing was found should have displayed Google or Yahoo results(probably Yahoo because of the whole Boss thing). That way at least half of your results would be relevant.

dominik 18y ago

Yuil's been taken down? Why?