Yahoo Exec Creates (and pulls) a Better Cuil: Yuil

[Marcia]

In a surprising (and hilarious) twist, Yuil is actually the product of Yahoo VP of Platforms, Sam Pullara, who is using the site to show off Yahoo's recently-released BOSS API. BOSS is unique among search engine APIs, giving developers an unprecedented level of control over results generated by Yahoo's search engine. And while Yuil isn't really doing anything new with its search results, they're more relevant than the occasionally bizarre ones we've been getting from Cuil.

Yahoo Exec Makes Yuil: Looks Like Cuil, With Better Results [washingtonpost.com]

He took it down, which is unfortunate because it makes an interesting point.

[Syzygy]

Looks like this year we could be in for a cuil yuil!

:-)

[DrDoc]

more relevant than the occasionally bizarre ones we've been getting from Cuil

"Occasionally?" Man, Cuil is bizarre when it even comes to the most common keywords.

[Marcia]

To be honest, I can't even read the other thread any more I feel so bad for the people behind this.

Apparently, somewhere along the line they missed the point that the infrastructure - literally the "guts" - of a search engine is a far cry from how results are returned in response to queries. "Powder and paint makes a woman what she ain't" just doesn't fly when it comes to search.

Beyond being funny (and also kind of uncharacteristic for how stodgy Yahoo usually seems to be), the Yuil experiment illustrated that very thing.