New Search Engine ‘Cuil’ Launched by Ex-Google Engineers

In every competitive environment, regardless of the industry — every co’s main concept and inclination is that of finding new and innovative ways to differentiate themselves from their business-rival. The same holds true for the algorithmically-inclined web search engines startups.

Under high competitive pressures from the likes of Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT) – new search engines startups scramble to come up with ways or at least attempt – of having some degree of viability against major competitors, particularly Google. One of the ways they can achieve this objective besides the degree of flexibility of the solutions they offer, is in part – through good analytics of data integration and the ability to offer more in depth search results.

Cuil, Inc. pronounced “cool” which launched on Sunday, is offering a new search service at Cuil.com. The company is led by Tom Costello and Anna Patterson, along with a few former Google engineers. Mr. Costello researched and developed search engines at Stanford University and IBM; Ms. Patterson is best known for her work at Google, where she was the architect of the company’s large search index and led a Web page ranking team.

Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil notes that it searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance. The co. also claims it can index more web pages faster and more cheaply than Google or any other search engine. Specifically Cuil states of being able to search for results across 120 bln Web pages compared with across Google’s estimated 40 bln.

Our significant breakthroughs in search technology have enabled us to index much more of the Internet, placing nearly the entire Web at the fingertips of every user,” Tom Costello, Cuil co-founder and chief executive, said in a statement. [Via Reuters]

However, initial reviews from critics seem less optimistic. TC‘s Michael Arrington noted : “Based on our test queries Cuil is an excellent search engine, particularly since it is all of an hour old. But it doesn’t appear to have the depth of results that Google has, despite their claims”.

The fact is that Google’s dominance exists in the ability that its search brings back results that most users find relevant. A few sample searches on both engines found Google delivering more results.

There is also some criticism around co’s name — for not being the sort of name from which global brands are made. But, heck Google, wasn’t either – and I love Google. But before Google became Google — how many knew the word even existed. Perhaps, is only my ignorance. However, the point is that while we wouldn’t consider anything other than market leaders, before picking on names — let’s just see how this startup will differentiate the next several months, in terms of its functionality, code-relevance and accuracy criteria from the rest of the search market.

Cuil is based in Menlo Park, California. The company has raised $33M so far from venture-capital investors.