On July 28, 2008, I wrote the following about cuil:

Is cuil Name for New Search Engine Cool Enough?

Also on July 28, 2008 highly esteemed and well respected industry technology expert John C. Dvorak wrote the following in PCMagazine Online about cuil:

The New Cuil Search Engine Sucks

I thank John C. Dvorak for his valuable insight, stunning perfection, impeccable prose, usual accuracy, verbal economy, on-line alacrity, understanding of what we need and most of all for agreeing with me.

Copyright ©2008 DM Jackson - WebMarket West - All Rights Reserved.

Limping into the Search Engine arena yesterday, new Search Engine cuil, pronounced cool, launched to much fanfare, sporadic outages and intermittent pages announcing that their, “servers are running a bit hot right now.”

Boasting 120 billion indexed pages, the cuil leadership team consisting of expatriate Google workers, Anna Patterson, Russel Power, Tom Costello and Louis Monier, promise Internet users that if big is Google then huge is cuil. However, initial criticism from well respected experts like Danny Sullivan over at Search Engine Land along with glow in the dark servers indicate this remains to be seen. In addition to hot servers, which are not cool, cuil has other features that may take some time for us to warm up to.

Call me quaint or call me simple, but when I enter the name of my own company in a search box, I really do prefer to see it pop-up as the top listing on the results page instead of listings for DUI Lawyers, Dubai real estate or what have you. Funny thing is, quaint or simple, so do all of my Search Engine Marketing clients… all of ‘em!

At least for now, this is going to be a real hard sell for the Search Marketing crowd. How does one respond to a corporate or professional client when cuil with their zippy state of the art Search Engine technology has a new algorithm that relates them to cabbages?

Apparently, we are not alone in placing value on accuracy over quantity. Numerous comments by those that have actually been able to get cuil search results have been unimpressive, to say the least. Our own test searches in what cuil executives tout as the world’s biggest index returned results that can best be described in polite terms as bizarre. Instead of seeing a typical list of related pages similar to those generated by MSN, Yahoo or Google, the too-cool cuil returns a non sequitur search train wreck that could pass for randomness at first glance. To fix this, cuil offers you, “helpful choices and suggestions until you find the page you want.”

Beats me how this is ever gonna be better than Google’s get it right the first time philosophy.

Copyright ©2008 DM Jackson - WebMarket West - All Rights Reserved.

An article at CNNMoney reports that Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) Chairman Roy Bostock and Chief Executive Jerry Yang blasted dissident shareholder Carl Icahn as a “corporate agitator” who would “strike any deal” with Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) to “get his money back quickly.”

As displeased as we are at WebMarket West to think that we all may soon have only two great marketing channels to work with instead of the three great we now have, blasting dissident shareholder’s is not going to win them any favor with the new regime.

Come on, Roy and Jer! Resign yourselves to the inevitable, like the rest of us are doing. Suck up to your new boss a bit and if you don’t have anything nice to say about Carl, don’t say anything at all. Or, at least don’t say anything that will upset the stockholders on the winning side.

An article in this morning’s ZDNews titled, Microhoo mudslinging: Icahn says Yahoo distorts facts of offer makes us wonder who has already decided that the seemingly inevitable conglomeration of these two Internet giants should be called Microhoo?

It’s bad enough that apparently we will soon be losing the ability to choose where we go for Internet marketing resources. While this kind of leviathan corporate takeover tends to strengthen the bottom line of the ultimate winner, it softens our opportunity. So, how ’bout we call them Yahsoft?

We were excited here at WebMarket West the first time we heard of a possible merger between Internet giants Yahoo and Microsoft.

A few months later it was still interesting when these same two megacorps admitted to,”talking.”

That’s O.K. We understand that there is a lot at stake in a gigantic merger such as the one that is once again in the news and on the minds of netizens and financial folk alike. However, as with a lot of really great rumors from the past, if something doesn’t actually happen soon, we’re going to lose interest.

So what if we lose interest? Well, probably nothing if it’s only us. But if enough of the Internet’s rank-and-file follow suit, it could turn the union between these two giant Internet darlings’ into a non-super-event rather than the media frenzy that marketing mavens and PR pundits across the net have been salivating over for so long. Imagine what it might do to the stock prices for those involved if people grew bored with the story of giant Microsoft romancing giant Yahoo. What if they decided that the story had gone on too long, and began to ignore the head-lines, by-lines and press releases. And what will happen if everyone is given enough time to figure out that even though this monster merger may actually one day occur, the combined Internet search market share and net online advertising profits from the two combined will still leave them in second place to legendary Google?

The release of WordPress 2.5 is just around the corner and like many bloggers, we’re eager here at WebMarket West to get our hands on it. Stay tuned for more information and a review of WordPress 2.5 soon… very soon.

The most recent release of WordPress, version 2.3.2, is now available. Thanks to the whole WP team for continuing to improve this outstanding Blog tool. Apparently, WordPress 2.3.2 takes care of some important security issues and keeps the bad guys from exploiting WordPress users communication efforts.

What an Internet marketing concept! Make the very best blogging software possible and then give it away to anyone who wants it, for free! That’s right, we’re talking about WordPress, again.

Sure it’s already been done by others. Mark Andreessen gave away Netscape. Microsoft gave away the Internet Explorer browser (cough!). There are others.

Currently, the team at Ubuntu are giving away one of the finest Linux Desktop and Server distributions we’ve ever seen. We like Ubuntu so much, that except for one Windows system in our office used for some legacy applications, everything else is running on Ubuntu Linux. It should be mentioned that plans are already in the works to turn this remaining machine into a Linux box, too and run Windows XP in a virtual environment using VMware.

Of course, this comment would not be complete without mentioning the latest buzz about our favorite blogging tool.

WordPress 2.3 was released today. The tireless and dedicated team that support the WordPress Blog system have once again combed through their code to make fixes and enhancements that will amaze you, inform your visitors, keep your stuff secure, increase productivity and keep you blogging. Although it is free to use like the other great stuff already mentioned, the primary reason we use it for our blog here at WebMarket West is that it is the best!

If you think I’ve been joking about how cool Ubuntu Linux is, check out these two links to find out how well it is being supported:

Ubuntu/Dell and Dell/Ubuntu

Apparently, popular demand still means something to some people.

Go configure!

Recent comments by Microsoft’s executive management have opened up a real can of worms and this time offended rather than entertained the open source community. It seems that a certain really big software company somewhere in the Pacific Northwest is being accused of using “Threat Marketing” not only to ensure their control of the desktop, but also to suppress public interest in the open source movement. The claim is that building bridges with other big companies like Novell, Dell and Samsung, will be good. The question is, how many bridges can you build and how far can you build them before they become trade restraining monopolies and pathological deceptions?

Alleging 235 documented instances of patent infringement, the giant software company in Redmond, Washington is being accused of using scare tactics to wrench control of Linux and other publicly licensed software from those who continue to work diligently to ensure it’s usefulness and success. Comments inviting Bill Gates to, “Sue me first”, are echoing throughout cyberspace and continue to attract media attention. One can only wonder what the outcome will be this time as proponents of both the open source community and the closed source community choose weapons to battle yet another round over free-use licensing versus paid-use licensing.

In an article by IT Week a Microsoft spokesperson was quoted as saying, “Our focus is on continuing to build bridges. Microsoft and Novell have already developed a solution that meets the needs of customers, furthers interoperability, and advances the interests of the industry as a whole.” The spokesperson went on to say, “Any customer that is concerned about Linux intellectual property issues needs only to obtain their open source subscriptions from Novell.” Great! One merely needs to obtain (buy?) from Microsoft’s approved source Novell, in order to run a non-patent infringing, untainted or legal Linux operating system that is already free for anyone to use under the terms of GNU General Public License. Huh? Where does this leave all of the other popular and free flavors of Linux?

While the folks over at Ubuntu are obviously delighted over the recent announcement of Dell’s intention to install Ubuntu Linux on their new computers, other news resources indicate that Michael Dell has already signed one of Microsoft’s bridge agreements. However, that agreement indicates Microsoft will sell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server certificates to Dell under an alliance between Microsoft and Novell. Preposterous as it sounds, does this mean that Novell subscriptions will be required by Microsoft for Dell to provide the Ubuntu Linux operating system pre-installed on their new computers? Michael Dell is running Ubuntu Linux 7.04 on his personal laptop and has been doing so since April. It is not clear at this point who’s permission, subscription or certificate he obtained in order to do this without being sued for patent infringement. Perhaps he is not, “concerned about Linux intellectual property issues.” Or, maybe he is siding with other-high visibility individuals who take exception to Microsoft’s position.

Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Ubuntu recently shared his opinion by providing timely comments regarding software patent issues and blogged, “In short, Microsoft will lose a patent trench war if they start one, and I’m sure that cooler heads in Redmond know that.”

© 2007 DM Jackson - All rights reserved