Cuil

[KRD]

http://www.cuil.com/

It's a search engine, an alternative to Google, that my unreasonable fear of huge corporations [in the software field that would be Google and, gasp, Adobe] leads me to advertise now that it has mostly been cleansed of its birth related quirks. It takes a fresh approach to analyzing pages which aims to return to you more results, but sorts them better and has an interesting way of displaying them. It also has more pages indexed than any other search engine in existence, yet is able to ignore duplicates and falsely well-rated websites better than the competition.

Because the website itself has a lovely about section (http://www.cuil.com/info/) where their philosophy is explained, I'll just point out some of my reasons for liking Cuil a lot and a couple for not liking it even better which will be promptly addressed once you've all joined me in bugging them to please fix now:

+ Small group of dedicated and clearly able developers capable of self-criticism. Who have faces (http://www.cuil.com/info/management/). One each.
+ Damn good simplistic design and a perfect colour scheme. I'm just a sucker for blue/grey on a black background.
+ Opportunity to stick it to the ad-ridden, privacy-breaching virus of a corporation that we all know the big blue G to be. Right?
+ Does not maintain a connection with your computer for minutes after you've already closed your browser. Unlike you know who.
+ No embarrassing ads on every second website you visit just because you once happened to have to research bright pink, adult size bunny costumes.
+ Cute, slightly clumsy marketing with an Irish anecdote at the centre of it all. You're never quite sure how best to pronounce the name. Quill? Coil? Cool? Hm.
+ Modern search engine not solely based on popularity...

+/- ...which does still throw a few wonky results and accompanying images out, but they're working on it. Did I mention they communicate (http://www.cuil.com/info/announcements/) with their users?
+/- It is run by a private company funded by influential individuals and firms, which is very nice in itself, but there's just three of them so far from what I can tell.
+/- They're yet to gather momentum.

- Doesn't have an image or feed search yet.
- Nor all the fancy additions, Easter eggs...
- ...and very useful side projects Google has gathered over the years. You can still use those separately, though, if you don't mind your cookies being stolen.


Your turn. Anyone with actual knowledge of how these things work tried it out yet? What will Google's response be? Will that internet browser I just heard they've released block the cuil.com domain? Enlighten me. :p

[*Splinter*]

+ Allows you to be a posey, pretentious, elitist ****

[MrBunsy]

Not very impressed, to be honest. Lack of image search puts it behind all the other search engines to start with. Also, searching for myself gives my site (eventually), but with the icon of the weird american guy of the same name. They seem to have forgotten that more than one entirely different person can share the same name (I have no links to his site, and he has none to mine, nor do they even have any vaguely similar content: scripts and games vs books and music). Not good :p

It's also just that bit slower than google, making it a nuisance to very quickly adjust your search (as I often do).

[*Splinter*]

Speaking of the 'ad-ridden, privacy-breaching virus of a corporation that we all know the big blue G to be' (:-/), has anyone tried Google's new browser, chrome, yet?

[Muzer]

Speaking of the 'ad-ridden, privacy-breaching virus of a corporation that we all know the big blue G to be' (http://forum.team17.co.uk/images/newsmilies/ambivalent.gif), has anyone tried Google's new browser, chrome, yet?
Nope, it's currently Winblows only.

It will also never be able to replace Opera, Opera is stable enough even on linux, unless you use flash 9 (and that is Adobe's fault...)

[KRD]

Not very impressed, to be honest. Lack of image search puts it behind all the other search engines to start with.

Agreed and I hope they get to that soon. The demand is obviously high, so I'm guessing it is a top priority, but then I don't really do much image searching via Google at all myself; there are far better ways of getting pictures of the sort of stuff I'm usually after*. The website search is the aspect I'm far more interested in, particularly its use in finding examples of sentences [comes in handy when translating] and, well, coughing up interesting websites worthy of bookmarking.


Also, searching for myself gives my site (eventually), but with the icon of the weird american guy of the same name. They seem to have forgotten that more than one entirely different person can share the same name (I have no links to his site, and he has none to mine, nor do they even have any vaguely similar content: scripts and games vs books and music). Not good :p

Yeah, the images being served next to the results are a little weird, but they're ironing things out and it's getting noticeably better with each day. About the trouble you're having looking for your website, have you tried looking for it by its content rather than the name of its author? From what I've read, such an approach should work better, since Cuil's aim is to provide interesting and relevant websites, then sort them into categories by the rest of the content on them.

Cuil helps you to search by offering you other choices and suggestions. Cuil will show you “Tabs” that suggest ways to clarify your search... Just click on the tab that reflects your interest and Cuil will narrow your search appropriately.

Basically, try using it less like it's Google. Look for pages you're actually interested in finding, not those you already have bookmarked, heh.


It's also just that bit slower than google, making it a nuisance to very quickly adjust your search (as I often do).

You only do that because Google got you used to that approach! :p

So Cuil searches the Web for pages with your keywords and then we analyze the rest of the text on those pages. This tells us that the same word has several different meanings in different contexts. Are you looking for jaguar the cat, the car or the operating system?

We sort out all those different contexts so that you don’t have to waste time rephrasing your query when you get the wrong result.

About the page being slower than Google, it definitely was when I first tried it. It's not anymore for me, though, and it'll only get better.


* Before you suggest it, no. Not private squirrel porn trackers.

[AndrewTaylor]

It's pronounced 'cool'.

When you say "mostly been cleansed of its birth related quirks", do you mean it can actually find relevant webpages now?

[MrBunsy]

Speaking of the 'ad-ridden, privacy-breaching virus of a corporation that we all know the big blue G to be' (:-/), has anyone tried Google's new browser, chrome, yet?

Yeah, not that great yet. Javascript is very fast, but it suffers from all the existing Safari quirks and more. Arcs on the canvas are drawn completely wrong, AJAX back forward history is even more broken than in Safari (even on gmail)! And there is some fishy stuff in the EULA. (http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/08/09/03/0247205.shtml)

It's got some potential, though.

Yeah, the images being served next to the results are a little weird, but they're ironing things out and it's getting noticeably better with each day. About the trouble you're having looking for your website, have you tried looking for it by its content rather than the name of its author? From what I've read, such an approach should work better, since Cuil's aim is to provide interesting and relevant websites, then sort them into categories by the rest of the content on them.I only managed to find a temporary page from my site on the ntl webspace (my server was down for a week about a year ago :p) doing that. Goodness knows how its crawler found that.

You only do that because Google got you used to that approach! :p
True, but it's a habit not easily broken.


About the page being slower than Google, it definitely was when I first tried it. It's not anymore for me, though, and it'll only get better.
I'll have to give it a go when I'm properly searching for something. I'll try and use it over the next few days and see if it seems to get any better, though the layout feels a little claustrophobic.

[franpa]

I searched "Virtuanes" (without quotes). I did not get the homepage at all. searching "Virtuanes home page" does not show it either :( it shows things like zsnes, VBA, mame, gens, nestopia... but not Virtuanes :O

I am of course restricting myself to the first page so it may be shown on a later page, but that is retarded.

[Paul.Power]

*Types in "lets play sonic"* (Which on Google tends to bring up a link to either CyberShell's LP of the classic series or the Sonic 2006 LP by pokecapn et al within a couple of pages).

Nothing on the first ten pages.

Also, why organise results into columns? It's completely messing with my ability to scan the page titles rapidly.

Also, frames what.

[Plasma]

Don't like it. While having loads of description does sound nifty in theory, in practice it actually makes it harder to find what you're looking for because it takes up so much room.

[AndrewTaylor]

Also, why organise results into columns? It's completely messing with my ability to scan the page titles rapidly.

Also, it means result #5 is more prominent than #4. That's bad design.