Cuil less cool, more stone dead

It's looking like Cuil is no more. The website isn't coming up and the whole site looks to have gone offline. This isn't that much of a surprise since I didn't think much of it in the first place. Back when I first reviewed it in 2008 I said "this is so ineffectual that it's not going to be competing with Google - ever. If people are looking for the elusive Google Killer they'd better get used to the idea that it's not going to be this one." It doesn't give me that much pleasure to be proved right since I'm always on the lookout for good Google alternatives. The size of the database (in their case 127 billion pages) doesn't actually mean much, and I still think that a lack of good hard functionality says a lot about their demise.

Comments

[Ben Boyter]

I always wondered why Cuil didn't pivot and turn their search into a crawling service like 80-legs. They could have keep improving their search in the meantime.

Its a pity because they did have a lot of talent onboard, but being that smart they should have realised what they released day 1 was not going to suceed.

[ReputationManagementConsultants.com]

IMHO, it was just a way too big of goal for them. Not even Microsoft can compete with Google as far as search is concerned.