Imagine being part of a giant Internet conglomerate that is doing business with majority of Internet users. Perhaps one day, you find yourself getting tired of being one of the small workers. You then decide to use the knowledge you have gained from your job and create your own company that will compete with your present company. This is exactly what two former Google engineers are doing. After two years of construction, the search engine Cuil is now ready to come out and challenge all competition.

The people behind the engine

The name Cuil (pronounced as “cool”) is actually a word that is of Irish origin. The word means knowledge, which the search engine aims to provide to searchers. The man behind the search engine is founder and CEO Tom Costello. Ever since his days at Stanford, Costello has been studying text and keywords that can be found on a website and analyzing the relevance that can stem from such a relation. Costello was also a member of the strategy team of IBM.

The other two founders are President Anna Patterson and Vice President of Engineering Russell Power. Both are formerly from Google, along with Vice President of Products Louis Monier.

Better interface?

Many people will probably find Cuil’s interface to be much better than that of other search engines. For starters, Cuil displays three websites across the page, unlike your typical search engine that will display results downwards. Cuil also provides noticeably more informative site descriptions—almost a paragraph compared to other search engines’ couple of sentences. Another noticeable feature is the logo, photograph or image that accompanies each website.

There is also a toolbar that can help you narrow down your search. For instance, if you searched for “black and white photography”, you will be given the options to make more specific searches like “genre photography” or “American photographers”.

Another important philosophy of Cuil is that it goes beyond the popularity of websites. This means that if you are looking for a website that is not particularly a popular one but has the content you are after, then you are more likely to find it in Cuil.

What the future holds

Many Internet enthusiasts and SEO firms are keeping an eye on Cuil to see how this new project does on the market. Many are also wondering if the management is not violating copyrights regarding intellectual property. The answers remain to be seen.