
Cuil Fail: Traffic Nearly Hits Rock Bottom - vaksel
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/27/cuil-fail-traffic-nearly-hits-rock-bottom/
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bprater
I don't think beating Google is all about "server hardware efficiency". I'm
not sure how they sold VCs on this concept.

It is about creating result sets so amazing that you pick up your phone and
tell your friends and family about it.

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amirnathoo
Creating great results sets, or at least much better ones than the
competition, is why Google won in the first place. But I think the real
battle-ground now is the interface. If Cuil or SearchMe really believed their
technology was so much better than Google's at delivering search results they
would have no need to also experiment with the UI.

~~~
dmix
(Quality results + boring but usable interface) > (average results + a great
interface)

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mrkurt
And TechCrunch continues their transformation into FuckedCompany 2.0.

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bfioca
I really don't think this is at all a fair or even correct statement. For one
(and this should be obvious), FuckedCompany didn't report on emerging
startups, just ones that were failing. Another thing is (and I feel this is
pretty obvious too), I'm not surprised to see more posts about companies in
trouble than ones succeeding in the first place (most companies don't
succeed), and in an economic downturn this is even less surprising. What would
be surprising to me would be to not hear about companies failing after having
had years of reporting of emerging new startups.

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acgourley
Wasn't Cuil all about getting acceptable search results with less iron in the
server room? If that's the case, no one should suspect they could beat Google.

I really haven't researched this, but I was under the impression they were
hoping to get bought by a search giant looking to cut the operating overhead
of their search division.

If that's true, they don't care about uniques, and thats why they don't seem
to be doing much (from the outside).

~~~
jonknee
But the lack of users is a sign that they don't have acceptable results. I
found the results to be horrible and like 99% of other people who tried it out
won't be back.

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villageidiot
Agreed. But I sure wish I had their marketing team working for me - 5 million
views the first month for a piece of crap like that is no small achievement.

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bbgm
One could just as easily argue that they are a victim of poor marketing. You
can hype something up to a degree that you are setting yourself up for
failure. Good marketing in the end is about setting expectations. The ones
their marketing campaign set up would have been difficult to live up to under
the best of circumstances.

~~~
villageidiot
Good point.

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rms
On the topic, one of the best reddit comments of all time: Cuils as a unit of
measure.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/7da5i/police_raid...](http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/7da5i/police_raids_reveal_baby_farms/c06cqxb)

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russell
HN had a posting about "postmodern programming" a couple of days back, so I
thought I would give it a try. Google found at least 10 pages of documents,
Yahoo a bunch, even answers.com found a couple. Cuil? Zip, Nada, zero. I guess
I won't switch.

EDIT: My bad. Apologies to Cuil and HN. I had a typo in my query. Cuil didn't
catch it, but Google suggested the correct spelling when I gave it the typo.

~~~
gaius
Live.com can hardly get any traffic and their search _works_. I had high hopes
for Cuil but gave up when it became clear that their search results were
simply bad or missing. They should have held a closed beta for 6 months.

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raghus
What's your reference for saying that live.com can hardly get any traffic?

[http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=lang&lang...](http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=lang&lang=en)
has them at #4 (which seems unbelievable but definitely past the bar of very
high traffic sites)

~~~
gaius
Look up the fraction of search traffic they get compared to Google (or even
Yahoo) - and the ad revenue they can generate from it.

~~~
pmjordan
Plus they must get a decent amount of traffic from mistyped URLs in IE - I've
ended up at live.com a couple of times while trying to test some XHTML/CSS/JS
in IE.

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villageidiot
Call me unambitious if you like but I would be happy to fail as Cuil has
"failed". They still receive over 150K uniques per month. I would gladly take
half of that.

Thanks to the massive mainstream publicity they received around launch time as
being a "Google Killer" they were able to expose their site to millions (yes,
millions) and lock in an audience.

Sure, the numbers have dropped off since then. So what?

I'm tired of hearing the word "fail" bandied about so self-righteously as if
Cuil should be ashamed of not beating Google at their own game. Like that's
some kind of minor challenge. Yes, their implementation is lacking. Yes they
have not taken advantage of the time since launch to work out its weaknesses.
But their PR department certainly can't be accused of failure and I wouldn't
be surprised if they're making some decent ad revenue off that kind of
traffic.

It would be more fair - to them and to us - to call them a mixed success. One
of the problems of the word 'fail' used so liberally in these contexts is that
it is a blanket refusal to look at the balance of someone's achievements in
its context. Used this way, it's actually a bigoted term and has the very
problematic side-effect of making us less willing to take a balanced
perspective on our own achievements in addition to those of the people we
label with it.

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chollida1
> Sure, the numbers have dropped off since then. So what?

I'm guessing the problem has something to do with the 33 million in VC they
took.

> It would be more fair - to them and to us - to call them a mixed success

Perhaps you could if they don't take any money but they did, and now they have
to figure out how to get that 5-10 times return on the 33 million they took.

That's the reason people consider Cuil to be a failure.

~~~
villageidiot
Fair point, but I assume they paid themselves a decent salary out of that 33
million. Plus they're incorporated so the worst they face is bankruptcy
proceedings, which, again, will not have an impact on the individual members.

Perhaps we could talk about a failure on the part of the VCs that invested in
them but even they have an excuse - they were supporting "the next Google".

The members of Cuil will come away with a significant high profile experience
on their resumes and no doubt every member will have a story that will explain
away the "failure" as someone else's fault. The members of Cuil have profited,
learned and lost nothing - in other words, they are in an enviable position.

~~~
gojomo
It's also too early to call it a failed investment and mere 'experience
builder' for the staff.

What if Cuil still has a couple years of runway with that $33 million, or
strategic investors who appreciate the 'option value' of a Google alternative?
(I don't know that they have either, but they might.)

I'm sure more traffic would be nice -- if only to help train their ranking and
snippet generators. And of course everyone likes their product to get positive
reviews. But even without those things yet, their tech and operations may have
made progress for a long-term assault on the giant search market

~~~
villageidiot
Indeed. People who were exposed to the site when they first opened may never
come back. But, like the laundromat in my neighborhood, they could have a
second "Grand Opening", only this time with better algorithms in place. It
seems unlikely after dropping the ball as badly as they did, that they have
the smarts to carry this out successfully. But it's still a possibility.

