Search site aims to rival Google

The Cuil homepage is even more sparse than Google's

Former workers at the web giant Google have launched a rival search engine.

Called Cuil, from the Gaelic for knowledge and hazel, its founders claim it does a better and more comprehensive job of indexing information online.

The technology it uses to index the web can understand the context surrounding each page and the concepts driving search requests, say the founders.

But analysts believe the new search engine, like many others, will struggle to match and defeat Google.

Hard fight

Cuil, pronounced "cool", says it uses more than 120 billion webpages to build up its index of the information it finds on the web.

It claims this is more than Google uses though the search giant has stopped reporting how much it indexes. Without revealing numbers Google claimed its index was still bigger.

Cuil claims that its technology moves away from the methods that have driven Google's success.

Instead of just looking at the number and quality of links to and from a webpage as Google's technology does, Cuil attempts to understand more about the information on a page and the terms people use to search. Results are displayed in a magazine format rather than a list.

The company is also trying to set itself apart from Google by not retaining any information about what people search for.

Cuil founders, Anna Patterson, Russell Power and Louis Monier are former Google staffers. The other founder Tom Patterson worked for IBM and others on search and storage technologies.

By declaring its aim of taking on Google, Cuil joins a long list of others that have tried and largely failed to dent the search giant's market share. Other contenders include Teoma, Vivisimo, Snap, Mahalo and Powerset.

"The time may be right for a challenger," said Danny Sullivan, editor in chief of Search Engine Land. "Competing with Google is still a very daunting task, as Microsoft will tell you."

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7528503.stm

Cuil搜尋引擎 挑戰Google

【經濟日報╱編譯陳家齊／綜合二十八日電】 2008.07.29 03:39 am

一群前Google員工28日推出新的搜尋引擎「Cuil」，這個讀音為「酷」的搜尋引擎，宣稱搜索的網頁內容是Google的三倍，可以送出更為精確的搜尋結果。 Cuil共同創辦人派特森女士（Anna Patterson）說，Cuil涵蓋的網頁高達1,200億筆。她說：「新的替代搜尋引擎不能更小，只能更大。」Google三年前停止公布他們收集的網頁索引數，當時最後的數字是82億筆。 派特森之前建立的網頁資料庫「Recall」2004年被Google買下，因此進入Google服務。她在Google工作的兩年中繼續建立搜尋網頁的索引，是這方面的專家。 Cuil的搜尋結果頁面與Google不同。Cuil比較像雜誌，塊狀顯示更多內容與圖片，而不是條列式的文字。 Cuil是許多試圖挑戰Google地位的新興搜尋引擎之一，但即便是雅虎或微軟這樣資源充沛的科技公司，也無法撼動Google在網路搜尋的地位。 根據comScore市調公司的資料，Google在美國6月的搜尋市占率高達61.5%，雅虎20.9%，微軟9.2%。維基百科創辦人威爾士創立的Wikia這些較小的後起之秀，市占率則微不足道。 網頁索引庫十分重要，因為所有的網頁都要先編入搜尋引擎的索引，才能加以搜尋篩選。分析師表示，Cuil一開始就能建立這麼大的資料庫，實力不俗。 派特森2006年離職自行創業，與她先生柯斯泰羅（Tom Costello）從創投公司籌到3,300萬美元資金，在加州共同創辦Cuil公司，目前共有30名員工，其中許多人都曾是Google的員工。 科斯泰羅原先在IBM公司研發搜尋技術，也是史丹佛大學的研究員。另一位Cuil創始員工莫尼耶（Louis Monier）也相當有名，他當年創立的AltaVista，在Google出現之前被譽為最好的網路搜尋引擎。莫尼耶也參與開發了eBay的搜尋系統。 但顧能公司分析師溫能說，Google現在已經等於網路搜尋的代名詞，即使Cuil真的比較優秀，也很難撼動Gogole的地位。溫能說：「搜尋就和其他產業一樣，重點已經變成品牌問題。我懷疑Cuil能讓任何Google人睡不著覺。」 【2008/07/29 經濟日報】