
Cuil shows us how not to launch a search engine - nickb
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10000670-2.html
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raganwald
If that is not the right way to launch, what does the author think is the
right way to launch something that competes with Google?

I suggest there is no such thing, that absolutely everything and anything you
try will provoke someone's criticism. It's not like the author was comparing
Cuil to Powerset, for example, and illustrating how Cuil failed where Powerset
succeeded.

Sure, the service seems to have a ways to go. Fine, and there's nothing wrong
with saying so. But the title is the worst kind of armchair quarterbacking,
all criticism with absolutely zero objectivity.

I'd say the author has shown us how NOT to write a review: failing to compare
Cuil to other startups competing with Google and failing to suggest what they
ought to have done instead.

~~~
gojomo
Agreed -- the piling-on criticism is unseemly. It's day 1 for an ambitious new
entrant in a area that desperately needs alternatives.

Whatever the problems, larger and older companies have had bigger breakdowns
months or even years into their operation.

Unfortunate is that Cuil's failure mode under load seems to be to return fewer
or no results. Some commenters have thus gotten the impression that
momentarily-broken results are in fact representative of Cuil's index
coverage.

With that in mind, a specific way they could have launched better would have
been via stages/invites, with Cuil slowing the expansion of invites if load
problems emerged.

Even now, they could refuse some of the load in a less-frustrating way, by
hiding the query box from some visitors, rather than making each submission a
crapshoot -- "will I get any results _this_ time?"

Also: they should really start a blog where they can share the story of the
launch from their perspective, in the coming days or weeks.

------
jfornear
I wonder if Cuil really intended to attract this much attention so early.

Everyone and their mother was talking about it. Kevin Rose twittered it, it
was all over FF, and it made the front page of HN, Digg, reddit, TC, etc. They
even had a story posted on drudge. That is a pretty ridiculous amount of
traffic.

I also tried 'Cuiling' myself and the results were pretty bad as well. It
didn't even find the domain name of my site which shares my full name.

<http://viewzi.com> is overlooked in this space imo.

