It's all over for Cuil

[bill]

It's not offical yet, but it sounds like Cuil is throwing in the towel.

Cuil Goes Down, And We Hear It’s Down For Good [techcrunch.com]

Cuil, the much maligned search engine that at one time had hopes of toppling Google, has gone offline. And from what we hear from former employees, it’s not just a temporary outage, it may be done for good. Those employees who are still with the company apparently weren’t paid this week, and they’re starting to say they’re looking for new jobs.

[maximillianos]

Unfortunately no surprise here. I think we all saw this coming the day it went live.

[SevenCubed]

It doesn't surprise me, they really struggled to produce relevant results. So now Google just moved up a notch to #6 in my preferred order of search engines taking the spot that Cuil vacated.

[micklearn]

If my memory serves me correct, weren't the founders of Cuil once former Google employees? Not surprised by the outcome, either -- Cuil might not have been the best choice to name something. Always sorry to read about layoffs/unpaid folks, though.

[brotherhood of LAN]

doomed from the start after the first impression it left

[martinibuster]

Had a nice interface. Might have worked better as a mobile app that could be manipulated by hand on a touch screen?

[Bewenched]

So I guess it's safe to say that we can block that bot. Nice.

[LifeinAsia]

We blocked the bot long before it went live- it just didn't play nice.

[zett]

Cuil gets culled!

That's good news. Not surprising, but still good. They were just too Googley in their approach (but without the backing of any success). No tears from my side.

[incrediBILL]

Being that I white list bots, that bot was blocked before it was even born :)

Adios Cuil, now I won't have to waste any more time reading about you anymore.

[asas111]

I have three observations about this:

-They (the founders) almost deserved it for being greedy. They had a great position at Google with a great pay, yet they wanted to leave Google to start something this horrible which failed miserably.

-This proves that no matter how much hype you give something, if the product itself is bad, no hype will help. Do you guys remember the hype around this when it was being launched?

-Some users on this very forum and others, fell for CUIL and thought it would topple Google. And this was only on day 1! AMAZING.


I guess the black background on CUIL's home page was forshadowing of its not too distant death! Seriously, black background for a search engine?

[jecasc]

-They (the founders) almost deserved it for being greedy. They had a great position at Google with a great pay, yet they wanted to leave Google

Oh yes, those greedy basterds who leave their employers, not satisfied with getting a monthly paycheck. Trying to start their own business. If everybody would do that, where would this world end up? And who would be left to work for me? I mean - if my employees suddenly started their own business - god forbid I would suddenly have to do some of the work myself. Brrr.

[frontpage]

Good riddance Twiceler robot.

[martinibuster]

Some users on this very forum and others, fell for CUIL and thought it would topple Google. And this was only on day 1! AMAZING.

Here's the discussion on Day 1 [webmasterworld.com]. Most of the members posting to that day 1 discussion were happy for Google to have competition while also acknowledging that Cuil had shortcomings. ;)

I think competition is good. It keeps businesses fresh and spurs them to keep innovating.

[edited by: martinibuster at 5:37 pm (utc) on Sep 20, 2010]

[r4bet]

Google and bing or yahoo are fine !
nobody can invent whell again and win ...

[jecasc]

Google and bing or yahoo are fine !
nobody can invent whell again and win ...

Yeah, heard that one before. Only it ran something like this: Altavista and Hotbot and Infoseek are fine....
And Mosaic was fine, too. And Netscape. Who would ever need another browser...

[Realbrisk]

Sometimes if you are ahead of the time you fail

Cuil would of been great for the Iphone/ipad

who remembers the flaming Palm got about its Folio, while the best seller in 2009-10 was the netbook

[tedster]

Cuil might not have been the best choice to name something

I agree, branding and marketing were a big part their downfall - much more than technology challenges.

[robdwoods]

Could Cuil have possibly been anything other than a play to get bought out by Google. Trying to take on Google on a general search play is like building cars in your garage and thinking you're going to topple GM or Ford. I can't imagine anyone starting an engine for any reason other than to hopefully make enough noise that they get paid out to go away. Unfortunately for Cuil the noise lasted for about a week and a half then went away on it's own.

[ChanandlerBong]

not forgetting that AWFUL scraped nonsense they come up with earlier this year. Have people wiped that from their memories? Actually, tbf, I wish I had.
:)

[BillyS]

Good ideas, poorly executed. I'm guessing you need a lot more than $33M to compete with the Big Two.

[tangor]

I wanted to weep on the OTHER thread [webmasterworld.com...] but I will expend my crocodile tears here.

Good riddance to bad rubbish!

[np2003]

Another one bites the dust. Cuil was actually interesting, esp their GUI. However their results were quite poor. Too many spammy urls littered page 1-3.

[NatronZero]

Ha - I love it @jecasc - exactly! I'm glad to see others getting initiative, it's too bad they didn't start slowly and find a niche that worked better for them. It's hard to reinvent a wheel, if only partially.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

It takes more than a better product to topple currently entrenched favorites.

[timster]

not forgetting that AWFUL scraped nonsense they come up with earlier this year. Have people wiped that from their memories? Actually, tbf, I wish I had.

When we speak of the dead we try to focus their better qualities. I can't remember the name of their Scrapapedia. Guess they were desperate by that point.

I had high hopes that cuil would offer something a little different. IMHO, Google/Yahoo/Bing offer results that are so much alike, if you can't find something one of them (cough, Google) it's hardly worth it to try another.

[MrHard]

I'm using RedZ as my primary engine now.

[super70s]

Yeah, heard that one before. Only it ran something like this: Altavista and Hotbot and Infoseek are fine....

Is that what you used back then? I mostly used Yahoo, but Google's uncomplicated page persuaded me to switch.

Unfortunately Google seems hellbent to give up that advantage, with distracting custom logos to commemorate such major occasions as National Talk Like a Pirate Day (being sarcastic, but just barely).

Then there's the more recent fade-in, apparently just because Bing is doing it.

[the_nerd]

Altavista and Hotbot and Infoseek are fine....
And Mosaic was fine, too.

anybody remember INKTOMI?

[graeme_p]

Nice GUI, terrible search results. How on earth did anyone think that those results were enough to compete with Google?

@timster, Yahoo results were often different from Google and Bing - and now we have lost that.

I use Yippy (it used to be called Clusty) when Google fails to deliver.

Its also useful to use other things, not necessarily general search engines: I often look for photos on Flickr or Imagery, and specific facts on Wolfram Alpha.