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.
Published by dj //
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?
Published by dj //
According to a story this morning in the New York Post, Microsoft Corporation may be crafting a $50 billion dollar deal to buy it’s sometimes ally and ofttimes competitor, Yahoo. Although the Wall Street Journal quickly reported that the discussion between the two leviathan corporations are in very preliminary stages, a merger may be likely, regardless of the speculative nature of this morning’s news.
Various Internet pundits have chimed-in on this most recent mega-merger. Some claim that this is a natural paring to be expected as jockeying for top position in the Internet Search industry continues. Others see it as a bad marriage of two terribly mismatched corporate cultures, one highly focused on the Internet and the other highly focused on buying anyone that they can’t outmaneuver. One thing is for sure, combining these two still puts them in second place relative to the gargantuan search company, Google Corporation.
If anyone remembers that this past March, Microsoft’s Chief of Search Technology, Christopher Payne, announced his resignation and departure to pursue, “other interests”, then the pride of Redmond’s move may be seen by some as, “to be expected”. However, I don’t recall hearing about anyone hanging a “For Sale” sign on Jerry Yang’s or David Filo’s front door as some Internet visionaries seem to imply. Further, if this should come to pass, what’s next? Are we heading toward only one Really Big Search Engine (RBSE), with only one set of results?
Welcome to Web 3.0 aka., the “OnlyNet”
© 2007 DM Jackson - All rights reserved
Published by dj //
