Cuil = Cool
Apparently Cuil is how you say “cool” in Ireland, according to search engine upstart Cuil. They just launched and are claiming to have a search index of over 120 billion pages, three times greater than Google’s. But, on their official blog, Google claims to have recently hit a search index milestone of 1 trillion pages, sort of, since Google does not actually index those 1 trillion pages.
No doubt, the web is huge and getting bigger. And Google continues to have upstarts nipping at their ankles, except that the Cuil team is made up of former Google engineers offering a few unique twists.
1. Rather than trying to mimic Google’s method of ranking the quantity and quality of links to websites Cuil’s technology drills into the actual content of a page.
2. Cuil’s results will be presented in a more magazine-like format instead of just a vertical stack of Web links. Cuil’s results are displayed with more photos spread horizontally across the page and include sidebars that can be clicked on to learn more about topics related to the original search request.
3. Cuil is promising not to retain information about its users’ search histories or surfing patterns - something that Google does, much to the consternation of privacy watchdogs.
