Cuil, Remember Them?

Hey, finally some news on Cuil, you remember Cuil don't you? The Google killers with the largest database of indexed pages in the world. Oh... not? Don't worry, I'd forgotten about them entirely too. Especially after the recent re-branding of MSN and Live search to Bing (which I'm am quite fond of).

Well it seems that Cuil have decided that it's time to innovate. As reported by Matt McGee on Search Engine Land - it would seem that Cuil have now added Maplines to their search results. This makes for a much more interesting results page as displayed in a search for George Orwell.

While Google keep the monopoly on simple search, could it be that the other providers have decided that if you can't beat them, start a new game? Ask.com brought out their 3D search (which has faded away), Microsoft eventually consolidated everything into Bing which is a lot more interactive, even offering a blurb on sites and now Cuil change it up a little. I can't help but feel sorry for Yahoo! as they really are lagging now (dead duck or just lame I wonder). I don't see people changing their search habits anytime soon, but the internet changes pretty quickly, what will Google do to counter this?

Too Cuil for You

Well it's been some time since the Google killer Cuil was launched and I've not heard much since. Launched to much fanfare and expectation I think this has to be the largest flop seen in years. I wonder just how much was put into this development in time and money? I wonder if any of the investors would be getting anything back?

As I've not used this search engine (mostly as I found it to be useless at launch) I can't comment too much on the accuracy of the search results but do know that the images displayed still don't quite match up. Nice try though. I think Google, Ask and even Live have better image results blended into their universal search.

Perhaps in time they will be able to make sense of "the largest directory of indexed pages". But for now the results seem to be outdated, irrelevant and at times just wrong. Was this what we expected of the ex-Googlers? Perhaps this is a prime example of why they are Ex Google folk?