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I can barely remember Cuil, but what I do remember is it being touted as a "Google Killer". Funny how that worked out; I wonder where they went wrong. Oh that's

I can barely remember Cuil, but what I do remember is it being touted as a "Google Killer". Funny how that worked out; I wonder where they went wrong. Oh that's right, I searched for Fedora Linux and got pointed to a menswear retailer in the south of France.

treerex 14y ago
They touted themselves as a "Google Killer". They basically came out of the gate claiming to be the best search engine in the world, and then they went down in spectacular flames. Whoever developed their launch PR should have been put up against a wall and shot. If they had rolled their technology with less fanfare they may have made a minor dent in the market, but even then its unlikely. But at least then they could have taken their IP and gone into the Enterprise Search space and perhaps have gotten bought out by someone evil.
- sp332 14y ago
  The press picked them up before they were actually ready to launch. Their search model was to segregate results into different categories and show all the categories at once, in sections of the page. When the traffic spike, the most popular categories went offline, leaving only the long-tail sections active. Most people never saw how the search would have looked when the software was finished and the servers beefed up.
  - eli 14y ago
    I don't doubt that's true, but even long after the initial rush the results weren't particularly impressive (IMHO).
  - ashrust 14y ago
    This is false. At cuil we were told by mgmt of the launch date and our very talented PR team kicked into gear and generated a ton of buzz via a nationwide press tour. Despite popular opinion, the ops team kept the site up during the massive traffic surge. A combination of poor mgmt, initial deference to user testing, last minute commits and a nasty indexing bug were the reasons the relevance sucked on day 1.
bane 14y ago
Even worse, they seemed to exist in a state of denial about the quality of the search, then proceeded to do nothing about it as they burned through investment dollars for a few years. Then put out an even worse automatic encyclopedia.

treerex 14y ago

They touted themselves as a "Google Killer". They basically came out of the gate claiming to be the best search engine in the world, and then they went down in spectacular flames. Whoever developed their launch PR should have been put up against a wall and shot. If they had rolled their technology with less fanfare they may have made a minor dent in the market, but even then its unlikely. But at least then they could have taken their IP and gone into the Enterprise Search space and perhaps have gotten bought out by someone evil.

sp332 14y ago
The press picked them up before they were actually ready to launch. Their search model was to segregate results into different categories and show all the categories at once, in sections of the page. When the traffic spike, the most popular categories went offline, leaving only the long-tail sections active. Most people never saw how the search would have looked when the software was finished and the servers beefed up.
- eli 14y ago
  I don't doubt that's true, but even long after the initial rush the results weren't particularly impressive (IMHO).
- ashrust 14y ago
  This is false. At cuil we were told by mgmt of the launch date and our very talented PR team kicked into gear and generated a ton of buzz via a nationwide press tour. Despite popular opinion, the ops team kept the site up during the massive traffic surge. A combination of poor mgmt, initial deference to user testing, last minute commits and a nasty indexing bug were the reasons the relevance sucked on day 1.

bane 14y ago

Even worse, they seemed to exist in a state of denial about the quality of the search, then proceeded to do nothing about it as they burned through investment dollars for a few years. Then put out an even worse automatic encyclopedia.