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Oh my goodness. Huge hype. Cuil, the next big thing after Google. Announced to be THE contender to the search engine colossus. Much fuss about nothing if you ask me. First of all go and have a look here to see why there was such a big hype about Cuil.

Even if you tried your best avoiding any kind of tech news, chances are high you still stumbled over a link that announced or otherwise talked about it. I, for my part, saw it on my Wordpress dashboard.

So what is Cuil to the average user? It’s a search engine that looks nice. Very web 2.0, very stylish, very soft and round. But does it work? I tried:

I work with networking equipment on a daily basis. One of the many annoying things to come across when trying out new drivers or software is “error code 10″. Now if we’re unsure what code 10 is related to in conjunction with a certain piece of hardware or software, we look for hints on Google.com. The way around this problem really depends on the hardware, drivers or software that is causing the error.

We need a good selection of possible answers and usually google finds those for us.

While Google gave me a broad, yet very valid selection of search results, Cuil merely threw a handful of half-way related results at me. Cuil may have lead me to a solution eventually, but the way it presented the data was anything but helpful. The excerpts that Cuil used from each link were not related at all to the keywords that I used in my search and didn’t provide any clue as to which link is most related to my query.

A screen capture of the Cuil search results

Google, on the other hand, bombarded me with a wide selection of spot-on links and excerpts that contained precisely the keywords that I used for my search tring.

A screen capture of the Google search results

My apologies for the chopped off screens of the search results. You can see the full results in the links I provided below or by clicking on the screen shots above.

These are the search results I get when I use Google.

These are the search results I get when I use Cuil.

To sum up the performance of Cuil, it just sucks. It just doesn’t provide the most relevant information right from the start and it doesn’t provide any insightful summary or excerpts for the search results. I went ahead and tried other keywords and most of the time I ended up with the same mediocre and not directly relevant results. It does feature some nice thumbnails for some results but that doesn’t really improve on the quality of the search engine.

Cuil doesn’t deliver.

Oh, and I almost forgot: How on earth do you pronounce Cuil?

Update: Apparently unable to practice what I preach and simply google for how to pronounce Cuil, I was informed by a kind reader that it’s pronounced “cool”. Kewl.

Update 2: If you thought that my example of how Cuil didn’t work properly, have a look at this result that a reddit user found. Amazing how much Cuil sucks.

Sometimes life for a fully ordained user can be quite comfortable. Not everyone can be a user. Not everyone can reap the fruit of technology and find it to their tasting. And sometimes a user can get himself into the weirdest situations because of his aptitude.

Even though we live in the age of Google, the age of search and find, the age of “Google it!”, we still live in the age of people who use the engine search field to look for “myspace.com” in order to get to the Myspace webpage. Somehow the address bar eluded these people. Somehow after over 11 years of browsable internet, some people haven’t yet figured out the http://www concept of directly navigating to a webpage. Instead of using the address bar to directly navigate http://www.myspace.com (which will work just as well if you type myspace.com since http:// is automatically prefixed and www is merely the root folder for all common webpages), they type myspace into the search engines’s search field and then click on the first link presented to them on the results page.

My girlfriend does this as well. As I am writing this article, I just paused for a moment to ask her how she navigates to her Facebook page. She confirmed my suspicion. She still does it. She types “facebook” into Google’s search field and then clicks on the first result. As annoying as that may be to my anal retentive nature, it may have saved her a lot of trouble today. Instinctively using the search field for just about any search query is a good habit which I can only condone. Even if the method may be inefficient in most cases, it prevents her from drifting into the wrong mindset of not knowing where to start. If she were set on using fixed addresses through the address bar, she may start underestimating the power of a good search engine. She may be too fixed on finding a specific URL rather than finding matches to well placed search terms, regardless of the resulting URL. You never know where you end up finding the answers you need. Being oblivious to the address bar may just be a catalyst for imagination.

Only a few days ago, I somehow managed to infect myself with a mean little virus that caused my left side of the neck to swell up, which made eating almost impossible unless I took some heavy duty pain killers. Somehow one of my glands got infected, which was so close to my jaw muslces that each time I chewed on something, it would press against the infected area and my neck would swell up. The pain was extraodinary. I went to see the a doctor and he recommended to let it pass as it was most likely only a minor virus. Before long the infection did pass and no harm was done. Can you imagine the joy I felt when I was once again able to eat a proper burger without pumping myself full of pain killers? If you’re a vegan, spare me the answer.

Lo and behold, two days later my girlfriend gets sick. And when she gets sick, she goes the full monty. No half assed coughs and a bit of a sniffle. Within a timespan of a few hours from waking up, she came up with a heavy bronchitis, a well spiced sinusitis, a migrane so intense it made the LCD TV flicker in fear and retaliation and one hell of a bad temper. It was a Sunday. My day off. My gaming day. My Call of Duty 4 day. On Sundays I don’t move much. I walk to the fridge to get a beer. I rest my hand on the mouse, the fingers of my other hand dance over the WASD Shift and C buttons on the keyboard and I kill virtual people with an M4. I do this for many hours. This Sunday, however, I went with my girlfriend to the hospital. No squad leader awaited me at the entrance. Nobody offered me an arsenal of weapons and there wasn’t a Javelin available to take out the huge receptionist. Time to run for cover. But ALAS! No cover in sight!

She was diagnosed with all of the above and received a prescription for a monstrous drug coctail. Antibiotics, Probiotics, Codein, Iron, Migraine pain killers and Coldex-A. Blissfull numbness was ensured.

The condition seemed to get better over the weekend and the next day I went back to work. At least the migraine subsided and the TV was safe again. Six hours into work and I was happily procrastinating when my cellphone rang.

Dee: Ow!
Me: Whats up?
Dee: Feeling bad!
Me: How’s the migrane?
Dee: Gone.
Me: So?
Dee: Something’s growing in my mouth.
Me: What?
Dee: It hurts, its swollen. Can’t talk.
Me: I hear that.
Dee: What should I do?
Me: Call the doctor.
Dee: But what could I have?
Me: Sorry. Forgot to pick up my PhD last week.
Dee: Fine. Be that way. I’ll google it.

*Click*

Half an hour later, I’m in a video conference with our Santa Clara HQ, my phone rings. For the third time in the last 10 minutes. I mute the computer and pick up. She really Googled her symptoms and it turns out that the swollen thing in her mouth may be an allergic reaction to the antibiotics. The internet wins. Great success. Even though I usually swear by a thorough “Google RTFM”, this didn’t convince me. I didn’t want sharp teethed monsters growing out of her mouth while I am sound asleep at night. I convince her to call a doctor to our house and have herself checked.

Fast forward to 20:00 that same night.

I’m at home. The door bell rings. I open the door and I was greeted in a way entirely unexpected.

–to be continued–

Google maps can be useful. Specifically when you are looking for a detailed view on an area that has been mapped with a camera. Its lets you zoom down onto street level where you are able to move up and down the mapped area and see the actual street in photo format instead of a simple map. But are those areas mapped solely with the help of camera equipped cars or some other static apparatus?

Looks like a Google bot can do more than just index your webpage.