Welcome to the Cuil

The blogosphere is ablaze with news of a new search engine Cuil, started by a few defectors from Google. Every tech blog has been wondering what to make of it. I gave it a test-trial yesterday when it opened up for business and I have to say that I won’t be making the switch just yet, although I’m quite happy that someone is trying to put a dent in Google.

If you go to the portal, you’ll se that Cuil boasts of a ridiculous amount of websites that it indexes. “Search 121,617,892,992 web pages” according to them. What this means is that it has a lot of pages that it keeps in its databases to search. In other words, it is expansive as a motherf–ker. But the real question is: is it good? But those of us who use the Web all day do not really think about what constitutes a “good” search engine because frankly we’ve been spoiled. Just to think back to the pre-Google days (I know, it’s like seeking the trauma in a therapy session, but it’s good for you, trust me, your techno-analyst). When I first encountered the Internet (I think around 6th grade), AOL’s search was powered (I believe) by WebCrawler. When you entered a search, what I really was looking for was not necessarily predicted very well. Nevertheless, it was the only option. In today’s Googlized world, we have not only been treated like favorite grandchildren when it comes to web search, we’ve also become hardwired to Google, though perhaps for good reason.

Google is just that good. They are killin’ it in the game because they are smart as hell. Listen, I’m not pro- or anti-Google in anyway substantive way, but what I mean by “killin’ it” is their adeptness to the maths(as the British call it). Google’s algorithm is so good at modeling what the searcher is looking for that it has us thinking that Google=the Internet. This is far from true, but nevertheless it is what good algorithms do, especially Google’s PageRank system, which feeds back into Google’s system what searchers actually click on in order to place them higher on the list for specific search terms. All predictive math, including statistics and polling, rely on algorithms. And even with Cuil, the big G’s algorithmic hegemony goes unchallenged, and as far as I can tell, it will be that way for a while. Despite the fact that it is made up of ex-Google employees, Cuil can only say that it has more pages indexed, but not really what you want.

In short, for modulation of desire and magical “open sesame” type of web browsing, stick with Google for now.