Can Cuil Compete With Google?
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The question used to be, can Cuil beat Google? Now its more like can it actually compete with Google?
Everyone was so excited about Cuil. They got a massive traffic. But, they fucked it up! To be honest, they just went public too soon. It should be more like private beta (if not alpha) right now. Having a nice design, a good privacy policy and a huge index doesn’t mean they’re going to be successful.
Its funny how people change their mind on something. People were talking good about Cuil and the next day, they start hating on it. I tried to support Cuil. I thought they would improve over the next few weeks (or maybe months). But, I’m not too sure if that’s going to happen.
Their search results are getting worse everyday. Last time, I searched for “webrampage” on Cuil I got some pretty decent results. Now I don’t even get that. All the results are completely irrelevant and they even included spam sites. They even repeated the same site five different times. Just take a look and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
You go to a new restaurant and the food there is just horrible. Do you think you’ll ever go back there? What if your friends tell you that the food has improved? Right now, Cuil is like that restaurant. Its hard to fix something when you look like an epic failure.
I’m not sure if people will ever give Cuil another shot. Some people might. But, most of them probably couldn’t care less. Well Cuil needs to work their ass off before they can think of that day. I still can’t believe that they went live so early. Where they high or something? And I thought I made bad decisions.
Oh wait. I didn’t answer the question, “Can they compete with Google?”. Do I really need to? Can they even compete with Ask.com?
Well I’ve said enough about Cuil today. Now its your turn to share what you think. Do you think Cuil can compete with the big guys? Will you ever give it another shot? Or do you think Cuil is just an epic failure?
Photo credit: Jacob Wackerhausen
22 August 2008 at 10:21 pm
[...] my blog post about Cuil. Take a look. This time I’m not really supporting Cuil. [...]
23 August 2008 at 2:24 pm
Cuil doesn’t really offer up anything fresh and new, so there’s no reason why people will opt to use it instead of Google. It’s the same reason sites like Snap.com and Ask haven’t tempted people away. The likes of an awesome service I discovered called TinEye do do something different, so have more potential.
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23 August 2008 at 2:27 pm
@Josh: Yeah that’s true. But, I would have used Cuil if it actually worked. Take a look at http://www.searchme.com. They call it the visual search engine. They take screenshots of the search results and display them in Apple’s cover flow. Now That’s something unique.
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4 September 2008 at 12:44 pm
Cuil has no chance. Google serves the function of a search engine well enough for even a demanding user such as myself. And the comfort factor of people just being used to Google so much is a definite plus.
http://www.iwebie.com/cuil-vs-google
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