20080728
Nothing Cool about Cuil - Click!
The Press has been bragging about Cuil (pronounced "cool"), a search engine created by a few people from Google hoping to get rich like their former employer.Cuil claims to have a database three times larger than Google, but the search still has alot of bugs.
Where Google has an Image search, Cuil does not. Cuil links images with artcles, images that do not match with the article. For example, a search for Bushido Hacks does not fetch BushidoHacks.com has the first result like it does with Google. Cuil claims that it is because it looks for pages that are relevant not popular. BushidoHacks.com seems pretty relevant. Searching on Ask.com would confirm Google is right.
Cuil claims to not track users like Google does, as if to state that Google is an Orwellian juggernaut (bitch!). While Google has grown from a sucky search engine to an outstanding search engine with services better than Yahoo! (I'm still pissed at them because they deleting my Geocities pages), Cuil seem to pull up all the instance of my name in the worst places. For instance, they pulled up the old avatar that I used on Weebl's website before they banned me. (Weebl's website has a very, very low tolerance for shenanigans. I think it was because I sent them the Goaste image on April Fools Day. At least I didn't Rickroll them.) Then their are the instance where my name shows up in user profiles. Bad Cuil!
Being a fan of various comics, manga, and video games, Cuil failed to find anything relevant. For example, one of my favorite Metal Gear Solid parodies is Metal Gear Yotsuba by Skaijo. Google found Skaijo's DeviantArt page. Ask found her NewGrounds page. Cuil found the internet community 4chan (NSFW!). My dog could search better than Cuil, and she can't even stay in the back yard without a leash.
But Cuil does have a couple of good features. A newspaper-like layout. Related Search Widgets. But even with all that, Cuil will more than likely go bust if the tech industry runs into a bubble situation.
If Cuil wants to work, it needs to realize that searches were not based on popularity in the first place and that its goal of relavance is way off the mark.
Labels: google, imho, internet, tubes, websites
posted by Bushido Hacks 7/28/2008 11:15:00 PM
