Critics 'Cool' on Former Google Employee's New Search Engine

Now that Wikipedia is being rivalled by Knol, it seems fitting that Google is being challenged by a new search engine called Cuil. Created by Anna Patterson, a former employee of Google, the new engine, pronounced "cool", is attempting to edge Google out of the market by including more Web pages in its search index.

The move is obviously the result of Patterson's knowledge of Google's search index, having been previously working on that particular aspect of Google. (Source: pcworld.com)

Cuil claims that it has indexed over 120 billion pages on the net and, unlike Google, can sort results according to idea. At this point, Google claims to have located 1 trillion web pages, but there is no indication about how many it has indexed.

A great idea, if it works. Larry Dignan from ZDNet reports that there are some significant problems in Patterson's search engine in these early stages. He can't find archived posts and believes that Google is much more effective at finding obscure web pages. Before trying to overthrow emperor Google with a new search engine, "It may make sense to actually try it first," Dignan snorts. (Source: zdnet.com)

Cuil is likely suffering from growing pains, and many of these kinks should be worked out in the weeks or months to come. Considering Patterson hails from Google and her husband (a co-contributor) from IBM, the tech background is there to solve these problems.

On the plus side, Cuil does have a snazzy results format, attractive layout, and the neat bonus of searching by related ideas. Ultimately, a little (more) competition may be the sign of good things to come in the search engine world.