Posted on 07/28/2008 11:05:40 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Former workers at the web giant Google have launched a rival search engine. Called Cuil, from the Gaelic for knowledge and hazel, its founders claim it does a better and more comprehensive job of indexing information online. The technology it uses to index the web can understand the context surrounding each page and the concepts driving search requests, say the founders. But analysts believe the new search engine, like many others, will struggle to match and defeat Google.
Hard fight Cuil, pronounced "cool", says it uses more than 120 billion webpages to build up its index of the information it finds on the web. It claims this is more than Google uses though the search giant has stopped reporting how much it indexes. Without revealing numbers Google claimed its index was still bigger.
Cuil claims that its technology moves away from the methods that have driven Google's success. Instead of just looking at the number and quality of links to and from a webpage as Google's technology does, Cuil attempts to understand more about the information on a page and the terms people use to search. Results are displayed in a magazine format rather than a list. The company is also trying to set itself apart from Google by not retaining any information about what people search for.
Cuil founders, Anna Patterson, Russell Power and Louis Monier are former Google staffers. The other founder Tom Patterson worked for IBM and others on search and storage technologies. By declaring its aim of taking on Google, Cuil joins a long list of others that have tried and largely failed to dent the search giant's market share. Other contenders include Teoma, Vivisimo, Snap, Mahalo and Powerset. "The time may be right for a challenger," said Danny Sullivan, editor in chief of Search Engine Land. "Competing with Google is still a very daunting task, as Microsoft will tell you." |
Hazel - as the third letter of the alphabet (a nice touch of Dwelly's) - is "Coll". He marks it as "obsolete". It can also mean "neck" or "destruction", but it doesn't mean "knowledge"! A "Cuil" without the accent mark, acc. to Dwelly, is short for "cuileag" and means "fly" - as in a housefly, or a fishing fly.
I get the idea that these characters don't actually SPEAK Gaelic . . . or even read it very well.
Thanks! I was at work and had only my electronic copies available.
Some sharp comments -- but I had to laugh a little at the post heading: our Gaelic society newletter is called "Am Bradan Fhiosa"
Scroggle is good. I like Alatvista and Dogpile
Google is part of the leftoid establishment and the enemy as far as I am concerned.
That’s Altavista
When it's an obscure question, I always check Mr. Dwelly. The frontispiece - of the Great Man himself - alone is worth the price of admission!
seems to be working pretty good now. I like their content rather than popularity perspective....by by google.
You might take Ms. Dewey for a spin, sometime.
I tried it — one thing I saw right away that I didn’t like: When you know the name of a website you want to go to, in Google, you can type: yadayada.com, and it will take you directly to the website. I tried that in Cuil, and it won’t take you there directly.
Same here. It might get better, but for now it’s a mess.
I just did my first search on cuil and of course my first search was ANN COULTER. I like it better than google for sure.
I think I tried that one too....Google seems to be pretty far ahead of anyone else just in the resources that they have working....
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