Subscribe to
Computerworld Ex-Googler, husband launch new Cuil search engine
Plan to index more Web pages than Google
Active Comments
July 28, 2008 (IDG News Service) A former Google Inc. employee and her husband launched a new search engine on Monday called Cuil (pronounced "cool"), aiming to topple Google by indexing more Web pages than the search giant.
Cuil Inc. in Menlo Park, Calif., is led by Anna Patterson, a former leader of Google's search index, and her husband, Tom Costello, who researched and developed search engines at Stanford University and IBM. The two, president and CEO, respectively, met at Stanford.
Russell Power, the third co-founder of the group, also worked at Google on search indexing, Web rankings and spam detection. He works as vice president of engineering at Cuil.
The company, which shaved an 'L' off its name to become Cuil, said it has indexed 120 billion Web pages and can provide results organized by ideas with complete privacy for users.
Google on Friday said it had discovered 1 trillion unique Web pages on the Internet, but the company did not give an updated number on how many of those pages it has indexed.
Cuil said its search engine goes beyond traditional approaches by analyzing the context of each page and the concepts behind each query so it can provide better rankings by content rather than popularity. Cuil then organizes similar results into groups and sorts them by category. It also offers tabs to clarify subjects, as well as suggestions on how to refine searches.
Cuil isn't the first Google rival to launch this year. Wikia Search, a highly anticipated search engine from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, made its official debut in January. Wikia Search hopes to provide better search results by allowing a community of users to index pages by using their Web page rankings and other suggestions, as well as its own indexing of the Web.
Related Blog
IT Blogwatch: Cuil: Google competitor, or pointless startup?
Reprinted with permission from
IDG.netStory copyright 2008 International Data Group. All rights reserved.
Today's Top Stories
Resource Alerts
Webcasts
IT Leadership Strategy: How to Provide World-Class Help Desk Support
Forrester Best Practices: Improve IT Service Delivery and Support with Remote Services
Make Customer Experience a Cornerstone of Your Revenue Strategy
Editor's Picks
Ballmer sets loose Windows 7 public beta
Hack forces Twitter into 'full security review'
Fake LinkedIn profiles promise prurient pics, send patsies malware instead
10 must-have free BlackBerry apps
Cisco down to business with gear for digital home
Microsoft to push IE8 via Automatic Update, issues blocking tool
| XenServer FREE trial Citrix XenServer is the simplest and most effective way to virtualize and provision servers. XenServer combines comprehensive server virtualization capabilities with unparalleled scalability, performance, economics, and ease-of-use. Based on the open source Xen hypervisor, XenServer delivers fast performance, easy management, and advanced features such as live migration. |
|
Computerworld Reviews Looking for advice on something to buy, use or download? Check out our searchabe, sortable reviews database for the best tips on everything from laptops, hard drives and mobile devices to operating systems, browsers, add-ons and Web apps. |
Accelerate your pursuit of perfection For almost 80 years, Kodak has been helping banks, insurance companies, healthcare providers, government agencies and other businesses produce billions of document images. So Kodak is uniquely positioned to know and deliver–what customers want: easy-to-use scanners that output the best possible image quality. Download this white paper now! 
|
Dan Tynan:
CES preview: The wireless revolution is finally here Two themes are clearly emerging: gadgets are going wireless in a big way, and everything is finally getting connected. ... [more] |
|
White Papers
Read up on the latest ideas and technologies from companies that sell hardware, software and services.
|
||||||
|
