I started using Google years ago because it found stuff I was looking for. I loved their “feeling lucky” button and used it quite often. When it came to looking for webpages Google simply blew everyone else out of the water at the time. However, I’m also for competition. With Google approaching 70% market share in the United States for searches performed, I’m itching for a strong competitor to emerge – and it may have happened yesterday.
When I heard about Cuil, I was excited. Cuil is a new search engine started by former Google employees “claiming they out search Google when it comes to depth and breadth on the rapidly expanding Internet” according to an AFP article. Sounds kinda cool – wouldn’t you say? Some pun intended!
So I gave Cuil a try. I like the tabs feature and the drill down feature but the user interface is a bit hard to get used to. However, I’m sure that with time I’ll get used to it and it will prove to be a small barrier. When it comes to search results though, I’m a bit divided. Unlike Tim Beyers at Fool.Com, I was satisfied with the search results on my name. I haven’t written as many articles are Tim, but I do have a non-anglo-saxon name and it could have easily have asked for a name correction (as Microsoft Word still does). So, on that score, I liked it. However, when I searched for “my ceiling fan pull chain needs repair” – it only displayed 2 results while claiming to find 8,687,370 results. Google in comparison had pages after pages for 36,200 results. So….
Despite the intial poor reviews I’m reading, I’m going to use Cuil as much as possible and see how it goes. So – for now – I’m “separated temporarily” from Google search.