Does Cuil just offer more to ignore?
Google鈥檚 latest challenger stepped into the ring today, and it鈥檚 already throwing punches. , pronounced 鈥渃ool,鈥� spouted all weekend to reporters that its search engine rummages through 120 billion web pages 鈥� triple the number that Google indexes.
That鈥檚 a hard number to fact-check. Google stopped bragging about the size of its index three years ago. At last count it was 8.2 billion pages. Google wouldn鈥檛 release the current number, but insists that it鈥檚 still 鈥渢he of any search engine.鈥�
Even if Cuil鈥檚 catalog is greater than them all, is it enough to lure users away from Google? In anticipation of Cuil鈥檚 debut, the official Google blog announced this Friday that it鈥檚 aware of 1 trillion unique web pages. But it only allows you to search maybe 4 percent of those 鈥� if you believe the industry estimate that Google indexes .
Why so few? 鈥淢any of them are similar to each other, or represent auto-generated content 鈥� that isn't very useful to searchers,鈥� says Google鈥檚 Friday post.
I like imagining the Internet as an endless source of useful information; but, really, when I enter a search in Google, Yahoo, or Ask, I only look at the first few results. And I never go deeper than the top 50.
But there are hundreds, some times millions of other pages that I could have clicked on. Do I really need Cuil to triple the number of results that I ignore?
Cuil comes from a good pedigree, though. Several of its executives are Google alumni, and one of them, Anna Patterson, launched a search engine that 鈥渨as so impressive that industry leader Google Inc. bought the technology in 2004 ,鈥� the AP writes.
Excitement about Cuil has attracted $33 million in venture funding. A good start to be sure. But Yahoo and Microsoft have spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to bring down the search giant. It鈥檚 done little good.
Google delivers 62 percent of all US searches, up from about 40 percent in 2004. Yahoo gets 22 percent. Microsoft trails at 8.5 percent 鈥� and that鈥檚 after buying several of the more interesting search startups, including the natural-language based Powerset. Then there are the brave boutique engines: Viewzi, Vivisimo, Snap, Mahalo, Redzee, ManagedQ, etc.
Each site fiddles with aesthetics. Tweaks its catalog. Sprinkles in its own flavor. Meanwhile Google has succeeded by keeping things simple. Ms. Patterson also makes this point, but says it with a touch of scorn: "Google has for 10 years now, and I can guarantee it will look the same a year from now."
I'm not convinced that looking the same is a bad thing. You know, if it ain't broke....
But what does it take to make a better search engine? A larger index? Smaller? A different layout? What do you think, readers? What would your perfect search engine look like?
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Update: Forget Jeeves, ask Powerset
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