3 ms·

Cuil has disappeared from view

13 points by fiaz 17y ago

trickjarrett 17y ago
What did these guys do to earn so much press? Ok I get it, ex Googlers taking on the behemoth. David vs Goliath. But jesus, let's move on to other more interesting and more promising websites. And I'm not posting this as a criticism of posting the story on HN, I mean that the other sites should not be writing about them anymore. Bleh.
- josefresco 17y ago
  "Chief Executive Tom Costello is an ex-IBMer and was on the research faculty at Stanford University, where he got his PhD. His wife, President Anna Patterson, another brainiac with a PhD, was the architect of Google's large search index, TeraGoogle, still in use today. She also worked with the Internet Archive, the non-profit digital library of Web sites." But but ... they had PhD's and came from Stanford and Google, they can't fail they're too smart! Oh wait, PhD's mean nothing in the startup world besides buying you a whole lot of PR.
  - ryanwaggoner 17y ago
    That's not really fair...it sounds like they both had actual real-world experience in building search indexes at massive scale, which you'd think would be worth something in this kind of venture.
- axod 17y ago
  It does have some interesting lessons in there of how not to do things. Startups would do well to read and analyze all the countless mistakes cuil made. I think it's still being written about because it was such an epic failure of mammoth proportions. They did some things right, they got a ton of buzz, tons of visitors, but they totally messed up their chance. Unlikely they'll be given another one. (Unless they rebrand at least)
  - batasrki 17y ago
    I think that their main problem was lack of availability once the buzz reached its highest pitch. I could understand less-than-impressive search results, since that could be an ongoing thing. However, a search engine crashing the way someone's blog folds under the weight of Digg/Reddit/HN effect is unacceptable in my eyes.
ableal 17y ago
The piece is all "he said, she said", by outsiders. Not much info on what's going on inside, or current results. So I bravely typed cuil.com (no link, either), and checked it out (and I alone have escaped to tell thee ;-). Not bad. I tried today's pet search ('Schopenhauer ladder', since you ask), and the first page results are different but not much worse than Google's in quality. Cuil does have a splog at #3. Fewer pages listed (370 vs. 18000), but that may not be worth much. Other observations: no page cache, means no word highlighting to help find the target in bigger pages. No ads in sight ("Hi, Adsense? I'd like to enroll my site ..."). The design is a little overdone; maybe some will find the 99% black front page, combined with modern glossy screens, helpful as a mirror for the soul (or just a mirror).
TweedHeads 17y ago
Cuil was an interesting idea killed by hype. Instead of being a google killer where everybody was picking on their defects, try a humble start then go step by step pushed by users who like the service and would like to contribute to improve its defects. Hope we learn from their mistakes. Be humble.

13 points by fiaz 17y ago

What did these guys do to earn so much press? Ok I get it, ex Googlers taking on the behemoth. David vs Goliath. But jesus, let's move on to other more interesting and more promising websites. And I'm not posting this as a criticism of posting the story on HN, I mean that the other sites should not be writing about them anymore. Bleh.

josefresco 17y ago
"Chief Executive Tom Costello is an ex-IBMer and was on the research faculty at Stanford University, where he got his PhD. His wife, President Anna Patterson, another brainiac with a PhD, was the architect of Google's large search index, TeraGoogle, still in use today. She also worked with the Internet Archive, the non-profit digital library of Web sites." But but ... they had PhD's and came from Stanford and Google, they can't fail they're too smart! Oh wait, PhD's mean nothing in the startup world besides buying you a whole lot of PR.
- ryanwaggoner 17y ago
  That's not really fair...it sounds like they both had actual real-world experience in building search indexes at massive scale, which you'd think would be worth something in this kind of venture.
axod 17y ago
It does have some interesting lessons in there of how not to do things. Startups would do well to read and analyze all the countless mistakes cuil made. I think it's still being written about because it was such an epic failure of mammoth proportions. They did some things right, they got a ton of buzz, tons of visitors, but they totally messed up their chance. Unlikely they'll be given another one. (Unless they rebrand at least)
- batasrki 17y ago
  I think that their main problem was lack of availability once the buzz reached its highest pitch. I could understand less-than-impressive search results, since that could be an ongoing thing. However, a search engine crashing the way someone's blog folds under the weight of Digg/Reddit/HN effect is unacceptable in my eyes.

ableal 17y ago

The piece is all "he said, she said", by outsiders. Not much info on what's going on inside, or current results. So I bravely typed cuil.com (no link, either), and checked it out (and I alone have escaped to tell thee ;-). Not bad. I tried today's pet search ('Schopenhauer ladder', since you ask), and the first page results are different but not much worse than Google's in quality. Cuil does have a splog at #3. Fewer pages listed (370 vs. 18000), but that may not be worth much. Other observations: no page cache, means no word highlighting to help find the target in bigger pages. No ads in sight ("Hi, Adsense? I'd like to enroll my site ..."). The design is a little overdone; maybe some will find the 99% black front page, combined with modern glossy screens, helpful as a mirror for the soul (or just a mirror).

TweedHeads 17y ago

Cuil was an interesting idea killed by hype. Instead of being a google killer where everybody was picking on their defects, try a humble start then go step by step pushed by users who like the service and would like to contribute to improve its defects. Hope we learn from their mistakes. Be humble.