¿Cuil, el asesino de Google?

Fijado el 9 de agosto de 2008 en 5:19

Después de una discusión sobre tamaño del índice de la tela de Google, Michael Arrington secretamente concluido diciendo:

Google también dice “pero somos orgullosos tener el índice más comprensivo de cualquier Search Engine.”

Ése puede ser hoy verdadero, pero no será probablemente verdad la semana próxima (cheque detrás aquí entonces). Google sabe que tan bien como nosotros lo haga, y ése es porqué fijaron esto hoy.

O es decir TechCrunch tiene una exclusiva.

Bastante seguro, el 28 de julio, TechCrunch fijó las noticias de un Search Engine brandnew llamado Cuil cuál estaría lanzando más adelante ese día.

Cuil se promueve como teniendo el índice más grande de la búsqueda de cualquier Search Engine, 120 mil millones páginas. Al parecer por el contrario Google tiene un índice estimado de alrededor 40 mil millones páginas.

¿Cuil tiene lo que toma? ¿Puede proporcionar una cierta competición sana a Google, dominator del mercado?

Aquí está un screenshot del homepage de Cuil:

Como usted puede ver, Cuil ha entrado para un interfaz negro liso, quizás distinguirse de Google tanto cuanto sea posible.

La página de los resultados de Cuil ha llevado un nuevo acercamiento la lista estándar de la tapa diez de cada otro Search Engine. En lugar los resultados se presentan a través de la página en tres columnas para disminuir la importancia de ese punto del número 1. Su verdad que en muchos casos hay los Web site múltiples que son igualmente relevantes tan esto es un acercamiento elegante.

Incidentemente Cuil tiene absolutamente un favicon horrible, incluso peor entonces el nuevo del Google. Compruébelo hacia fuera para saber si hay se, aunque señalar esto hacia fuera hizo que piensa de una de las historietas recientes de Cottingham del robo de Ruido a la señal:

Si usted pensó Google era el rey de páginas caseras espartanos, Cuil uno-lo sube. 28 es el número mágico para Google, Cuil lo bate sea un conjunto 16 palabras.

Podríamos hablar del interfaz, el fondo, las razones que o que no trabajará por siempre, al menos Danny Sullivan de Tierra del Search Engine brillante sumado le para arriba con una oración:

Cuil proporciona qué aparece ser un índice comprensivo de la tela, una presentación única de la exhibición y emerge en un momento en que la gente pudo ser lista abrazar un servicio del “oprimido” de la calidad.

Vea que es el hecho, los arranques del Search Engine es una moneda de diez centavos por docena. Se parece como cada segunda semana que veo la promesa asombrosa siguiente del start-up semántica, el P2P, índices Spam-libres, el etc de la gente y así sucesivamente accionado o comunidad accionado.

La realidad es, Google ha sido bastante buena por una década ahora. No es perfecto por un tiro largo pero tomaron la cuota de la mente y de mercado y la guardaron.

Desafortunadamente competidor del número 2 Yahoo! has some stigma from being the old search engine of the 90s and its image has been hurt even more by the recent Microsoft takeover attempt and proxy battle with investor Carl Ichan.

Windows Live Search is also getting close to Google in terms of accuracy and has had vast amounts of resources sunk into the service yet suffers somewhat from being associated with Microsoft and bad marketing (MSN, Live… what?).

So Why is Cuil any different?

Considering the huge combined resources of Yahoo and Microsoft have done little to nothing to stop the rapidly expanding Google how wise is it to expect a little start-up like Cuil to compete with the giant?

Well, Cuil has some pretty impressive profiles behind the service. From the New York Times:

In her two years at Google, Anna Patterson helped design and build some of the pillars of the company’s search engine, including its large index of Web pages and some of the formulas it uses for ranking search results.

Not just Anna, Cuil also includes the founder of AltaVista Louis Monier, Tom Costello who was involved with IBM’s WebFountain project and Russell Power who worked on the TeraGoogle project. Anna’s husband and several additional ex-Google employees are also part of the team.

This is an impressive team of developers and gives substance to their statement of creating the most relevant search engine.

The biggest issue I have seen with Cuil’s announcement concerning their search engine is one which was also pointed out by Danny Sullivan:

Seeing Cuil trot out size figures is incredibly disheartening and a step backwards, not forwards. Time better spent on other things (such as measuring the RELEVANCY of the results) will instead get consumed by those trying to count pages. Without even running queries and trying to perform comparison counts

I really don’t care how big a search engine index is when I know, just as you know, that go beyond page 10 on any web search and you’ll find nothing but spam and Chinese websites. All I care about is how accurate the results on that first page are.

I decided to test out several of the most popular search services to see how they compared to each other and newcomer Cuil.

For this test I have used the phrase “shipping seven”. Shipping Seven refers to the development process of the next version of Microsoft Windows (Windows codename: seven). It’s a good phrase as it’s pretty obscure and will really test how relevant results are between search engines.

Here are the results:

Cuil

10% Relevant

Cuil had the grand total of 1 relevant result, admittedly it was at the first position, however I expected it to do a little better then that.

Google

100% Relevant

All 10 of Google’s first page where directly relevant with result number 1 going to the controversial Shipping Seven blog itself, which in fact it even has a mini feed of the latest 3 items as you can see in the screenshot.

Yahoo!

50% Relevant

A total of 5 links scattered down the page, the Shipping Seven blog makes it to number 1. A decent result, but also indicative of why Yahoo is trailing Google.

Windows Live Search

60% Relevant Results

Live Search does marginally better then Yahoo! and provides 6 relevant links. Note that Live Search has 6 relevant links over the first 7 results, Yahoo! has only 4 relevant links over the first 7.

Ask

0% Relevancy

Ask actually had 4 relevant results on the front page, but I’m giving it a 0% due to the horrendous design.

Here is what greeted me after submitting my search:

That’s right, not a single actual search result in view, you have scroll down for that. Instead I get a full page of advertisements and an annoying sidebar suggesting search terms. The top right side of the page is the ‘hottest’ area, the place we see first… how filling it up with a sidebar only a few people may use is considered smart I cannot understand.

As If space wasn’t constricted enough the Ask search bar is an overlay rather then a header at the top of the page.

Sure, this is just one search term I’ve demonstrated here but I think by looking at these results we can see that Google has little to fear yet. That said, Google has spent a decade and millions of dollars working on their index, Yahoo and Microsoft potentially have as well.

Cuil is just a few days old and has made an impressive start; I look forward to seeing their progress in the search space. What are your thoughts on Cuil after playing around with it for the last few weeks?

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

» Filed Under Cool Websites