IT Services News

Google, the world’s favourite search engine, has a new rival threatening to steal its crown. Created by former employees of the web giant, the new kid on the block claims to do a better job of indexing the information found in billions of web pages online.

The new search engine is called Cuil, which is derived from the Gaelic for knowledge and hazel. Pronounced "cool", it claims to index more web pages than Google, citing more than 120 billion as its figure. Google no longer publishes the amount of websites it indexes, but claimed that its index was still bigger.

So how do you attempt to provide a better search experience than Google? For a start, Cuil works slightly differently. Instead of basing a website’s position on factors such as the number of inbound links, Cuil attempts to understand the context of the information on each page and relates this to search terms. Something else which differs from the search experience we’re all familiar with is the format of the search results, with Cuil preferring to return results in a magazine format. Finally, privacy concerns are also minimised as Cuil does not retain any information regarding what its users search for.

Cuil was founded by Anna Patterson, Russell Power and Louis Monier who are all ex-Google staff. They joined forces with Tom Costello, a former IBM staffer who has also worked with others on search and storage technology.

So, is the end nigh for Google? Probably not very likely. Analysts have said that they think Cuil will struggle to compete. Danny Sullivan, editor in chief of Search Engine Land, said, "The time may be right for a challenger. Competing with Google is still a very daunting task, as Microsoft will tell you."