A search engine that redefines ‘cuil’
TEXT OF STORY
Scott Jagow: So far, Google has taken on all comers and trounced them. It has more than 60 percent of the search engine market. The word “Google” is now in the dictionary. But some former Googlers are gonna try to compete with their old company. This morning, they launched a new search engine called “cool.” It’s spelled C-U-I-L. It comes from an old Irish word meaning knowledge.
We asked our innovations reporter, Janet Babin, to check it out. She reports from North Carolina Public Radio.
Janet Babin: Cuil says its search index spans 120 billion Web pages. That would make it three times larger than search leader Google. The broader the index, the larger the potential results.
Carl Howe is with technology research company Yankee Group. He says a broader search index won’t be enough to push Cuil ahead of the pack:
Carl Howe: More results are not necessarily better. What I want is better results, and that’s really the place where I think they’re going to have to shine.
I used Google to find Cuil’s Web page. Then I searched for Marketplace. The show came up first on both pages. CUIL’s results look different — displayed in magazine blurbs with more photos.
Maybe the biggest difference between the two sites isn’t the results, but the search record. Cuil has promised not to store user search histories or Web surfing patterns — like Google does.
I’m Janet Babin for Marketplace.
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