Tonight, Menlo Park-based Cuil (pronounced ‘cool’), is finally launching after being in stealth mode for several years. Founded by an experienced search expert couple, Tom Costello (CEO) and Anna Patterson (VP Engineering) with Russell Power, Cuil’s launch is highly anticipated by many. The launch comes with a groundbreaking 120 billion web page index, which make them arguably the most comprehensive search engine on the web rivaling even Google. While Google does not disclose the size of their indexes, they claim to know of a trillion unique web pages.
Cuil’s secret to creating a low-cost search engine that runs at Google-scale is their strategy of indexing the web and handling actual queries by users. Rather than attributing importance of a website based on keywords, Cuil looks deeply into how words are related, allowing users to receive more relevant results. This semantic approach to search is distinct from the natural language approach from Powerset, as Cuil does not try to understand the sentences on a website, but rather it properly catalogs and files a website.
Cuil also has a new search interface with results shown in columns, along with images and more detailed information about the results. Users can make refinements to their search with the “explore by category” feature found on the right side of the results page. As an additional layer of customizability, Cuil has tabs across the top of the search results recommending related searches.
For example, looking up “Dogs”, results in category refinements like “water dogs” and “crossbreed”. Additionally, a search for “New York” would show tabs for “New York Times”, “New York City” and “New York Yankees” with relevant results.
One of Cuil’s main focuses is also user privacy. They have gone to great lengths to make sure none of the user data they have collected can be turned over to someone else or used to identify a computer asking the query. This includes not creating cookies and not recording IP addresses.
Cuil has been financially backed with $33 million from Greylock, Madrone Capital Partners and Tugboat Ventures.
The Company:
Cuil is a search engine founded by Tom Costello (CEO) and Anna Patterson (VP Engineering), experienced search experts, with Russell Power. Cuil focuses on indexing the web and handling actual queries by users with a semantic approach to search and an emphasis on user privacy. The company has raised $33 million from Greylock, Madrone Capital Partners and Tugboat Ventures.
The People:
Tom Costello and Anna Patterson, a husband and wife team, are the founders of Cuil and are joined by Russell Power. Costello is the CEO and Patterson is the VP Engineering. All three ex-Google employees have experience in the search engine industry.
Cuil is a unique search engine that uses a semantic approach to searching, with the launch of their enormous index of 120 billion pages, they have made a statement in the search engine market, on top of that they prioritize user privacy. The launch of Cuil brings competition in the search engine market between tech giants with immense possibility to change the search engine industry going forward.
