Cuil.com - Any thoughts?

[gingeman]

So...

Big news is Cuil.com has launched as the new super-sized search engine in town...

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=cuil&meta=

Anybody got any thoughts?

Do you think they really can compete with the big 'G'?

 

[Compassion]

I just send a letter to CUIL.com team, I questioned their pick Cuil.com with 33 Million Dollar Budget! I just provided them with my feedback. A positive approach. and also gave them options to what is brandable VS cuil

Cuil just doesn't sell it, it will fail on TV and Radio... and I know this, cause i work in entertainment... the EAR and EYE are very picky....

Get it right the first time and win!

I agree, what an absolutely horrible choice for a domain for a 33 million dollar startup.

Surely they could have found something better in Kevin, Adam or Rick's portfolio, heck I think half of us NPers could have sold them a better name than this.

 

[DN BROKER]

I agree, what an absolutely horrible choice for a domain for a 33 million dollar startup.

Surely they could have found something better in Kevin, Adam or Rick's portfolio, heck I think half of us NPers could have sold them a better name than this.

And they are the ones getting paid 6 to 7 figure salaries... lol

so much money and yet so litle brains in picking the right brand!

 

[johname]

"Founded by husband-and-wife team Tom Costello and Anna Patterson"

At least take a hyphenated form of your husband's name lol :hehe:

 

[Ross]

Im sorry but the whole thing is fail IMO. I dont like the design, the search results, and the placement of webpages. Not to mention the column thing is just really really tacky. Sorry but google is still #1 and will remain #1.

 

[dgridley]

Cuil ain't "cool".. search results suck except for the most generic terms. Looking for several sites produced either no or inaccurate results..

 

[Alan Glennon]

I don't think it's viable quite yet, but I look forward to its continued evolution.

 

[John Doe]

Crap.

- This name is dilettantish for branding. Too much spelling/pronouncing problems for too many languages. Abortus.
- There is no quality in their todays results. They may have indexed more crap than any other SE but their algorithm seems to be clearly underdeveloped to measure site/page quality and importance. That`s Google`s strenght. Actually understandable, 33 millions is minus 0 compared to resources of Yahoo and Microsoft. Yeah, they also trying many years to build best SE...
- A bit more understanding of human behavior, attention tracking, layout basics etc wouldn`t hurt... Fonts are difficult to read, black header and footer dominating page... No way guys, a bit more effort needed to win a place under the sun.

 

[RegFee]

http://www.cuil.com <----there's a link for those who don't want to bother visiting a bunch of typos. I agree, letters are way too close together on the keyboard.

http://ciul.com/ is for sale.

http://couil.com/ has the same looking logo as http://www.cuil.com/

weird.

Column format
is too difficult
to scan quickly
for valid results
imo.

Another weird quirk, if you type
ti
or
tt
into the search box, it bolds those letters.

 

[Miyavi]

Ex-Google team take on Web giant; Cuil opens!

"Anna Patterson's last Internet search engine was so impressive that industry leader Google Inc. bought the technology in 2004 to upgrade its own system.

She believes her latest invention is even more valuable -- only this time it's not for sale.

Patterson instead intends to upstage Google, which she quit in 2006 to develop a more comprehensive and efficient way to scour the Internet.

The end result is Cuil, pronounced "cool." Backed by $33 million in venture capital, the search engine plans to begin processing requests for the first time Monday."

• Former Google team members set up new search engine Cuil, launched Monday
• First time Google faced a general-purpose search engine created by former workers
• Backed by $33 million venture capital, claims it indexes more pages than Google
• Through May, Google held a 62 percent share of U.S. search market

Source and full article @ http://edition.cnn.com/2008/BUSINESS/07/28/google.rival.ap/index.html

Check out Cuil @ http://www.cuil.com/

 

[cityforums.com]

1 st impression bad name choice

2 and 3rd impression horrible name choice ...

I guess the engineers had more say about the project than the marketers.

 

[labrocca]

wow...love the results page!

 

[Zepia]

Nice!!

My new homepage!

 

[johname]

They might have been thinking of a name that works well in diffrent langues thats only 4 letters long. But still with that budget you think they could have easly come up with a better name. All i know is if you have to highlight the "i" in blue to help people remember the name, your starting at a disadvantage

 

[cityforums.com]

Heck with that budget they could of bought a universally appealing

LLL.com ! ! ! :td:

Engineers should stick to engineering.

 

[CrazyTech]

It takes time to develop these things, it's not like you just put out a new revolution to beat Google overnight.

 

[namewaiter]

i'm not sold on the name either, but most people thought 'google' was a bad choice as well at the time

i too hope to see it evolve into a better competitor, and they could always rebrand later like yahoo did with overture

 

[RegFee]

i'm not sold on the name either, but most people thought 'google' was a bad choice as well at the time

I guess if someone was living under a rock, and had never heard of google, if you asked them how to spell it, they'd answer with either:
google
googol
googal
googel

Still, google makes sense because there are similar words in the English language. Goggle
Giggle
Gaggle
Waggle

Whereas I can't think of any words similar to CUIL (cool).

So I'd say the first time google user who has only heard of the site by word of mouth has about a 50% chance of spelling it right, but someone who has been told to go to "cool.com" will without a doubt need to be told how to spell it.

 

[johname]

I guess if someone was living under a rock, and had never heard of google, if you asked them how to spell it, they'd answer with either:
google
googol
googal
googel

Still, google makes sense because there are similar words in the English language. Goggle
Giggle
Gaggle
Waggle

Whereas I can't think of any words similar to CUIL (cool).

So I'd say the first time google user who has only heard of the site by word of mouth has about a 50% chance of spelling it right, but someone who has been told to go to "cool.com" will without a doubt need to be told how to spell it.

Totaly agree. Google is so much more pleasent looking and easyer to spell and to say then CUIL

 

[namewaiter]

I guess if someone was living under a rock, and had never heard of google, if you asked them how to spell it, they'd answer with either:
google
googol
googal
googel

Still, google makes sense because there are similar words in the English language. Goggle
Giggle
Gaggle
Waggle

Whereas I can't think of any words similar to CUIL (cool).

So I'd say the first time google user who has only heard of the site by word of mouth has about a 50% chance of spelling it right, but someone who has been told to go to "cool.com" will without a doubt need to be told how to spell it.

and if the pr continues, i can see a lot of increased traffic to cool.com and maybe even kewl.com (because they knew it was spelled differently, but couldn't remember how)

 

[Epic]

I didn't even realize it was supposed to be pronounced "cool" until I heard someone say it. Pretty bad choice of domains.