Cuil Search Needs Time, Users to Fight Google

Both Cuil and Google had it, but I'm going to give Cuil credit for rendering it first. Google had it second, followed by movie reviews. This isn't a bad thing; it's probably smart to show people what critics think of the movie. But when I search for "The Dark Knight," I want the official site first, so Cuil won on that one, barely.

However, enter "How to hit a baseball" on both and Google returns a YouTube video for beginners, while Cuil produces a segment from About.com on hitting in the third result from the left. Google gets the edge there for most important results.

Others had varying results and experiences with Cuil.

The comments section in my piece from July 28 provided more ammunition versus Cuil, as well as some fervent supporters who are clearly tired of Google and want something new. For the record, I don't own Google stock, though I wish I had bought in early like everyone else.

"I tried accessing Cuil and it was as good if not better than Google for me," Anand wrote. "Remember that Google has had nearly 10 years of uncomparable [sic] growth. So Cuil will certainly find it that much harder now that there are quite a few of them over there in the market."

"I had no problems accessing cuil and I found it very refreshing new entrant in the search engine space," wrote an anonymous reader. "I hope users will give it the chance that it derserves [sic] rather than shoot it down day one like your unfair article."

Now for the not-so-positive experiences. One anonymous reader, who is not a Google user, wrote:  

I was able to access Cuil with no difficulty. However, I was quite disappointed with 2 of 3 searches I ran there (admittedly both of them relatively obscure)—but I ran the same searches on Google and got much better results. I do like the design of Cuil, but, unless it can come up with more relevant and thorough results than other search engines, I see no reason to use it. Back to Dogpile!

David added: 

I was fairly optimistic about cuil, as the developers were ex Google staff. The thing I was taught about launching stuff was that if it is beta for public scrutiny, feedback and testing, say so. Secondly, if you are going to skip that process or take another testing route, don't launch until most of the bugs are worked out. I am not pro Google or pro any software, hardware or company. I just like what I like. I'm sure cuil will get it together, but soon is the word on the street. To type in well known and popular search parameters, and not even have anything remotely related come up is to head down the same road as Excite and WebCrawler. I am positive the folks at cuil are working feverishly to sort things, and I am looking forward to having an alternative engine at my finger tips. It will be interesting to see what, if any portable apps they will be rolling out.

Remember, folks, this is early days for Cuil. Your feedback will be instrumental in shaping the site in the years to come. Expect advanced search capabilities, but in the meantime just appreciate the distinct lack of advertising on the site.

But don't get too comfortable; it's only a matter of time before Cuil looks to monetize with ads to see some return on the $33 million investment venture capitalists have made in the company.

Who can say if users will drop Google for Cuil? That's up to all of us. What side of the fence are you on?