Cuil
Encyclopedia
Cuil was a search engine
that organized web pages by content and displayed relatively long entries along with thumbnail
pictures for many results. Cuil said it had a larger index than any other search engine
, with about 120 billion web pages. It went live on July 28, 2008. Cuil's servers were shut down on September 17, 2010, with later confirmations the service had ended.
Cuil was managed and developed largely by former employees of Google
, Anna Patterson and Russell Power. The CEO and co-founder, Tom Costello, has worked for IBM
and others. The company had raised $33 million from venture capital
firms including Greylock
. Cuil's privacy policy, unlike that of other search engines, said it did not store users’ search activity or IP addresses.
. On December 19, 2008, BusinessWeek
listed Cuil as one of the most successful U.S. startups of 2008, based on the amount of money they raised. As of February, 2009, Cuil had 127 billion indexed pages. According to Alexa
, the site reached a peak of just over 0.2% of worldwide internet users in late July 2008 and by September 12, 2008, it had dropped to 0.02% and ranked as the 5,340th site by traffic. By October 13, 2008, it had dropped to 0.005% and ranked as the 21,960th site in traffic.
reported that on the morning of September 17, 2010 "employees were told about Cuil's demise [...] and the servers were taken offline five hours later." Laid-off employees were told they would not be paid. The shutdown reportedly came after an acquisition agreement fell through earlier in the week.
account via Cuil, which would then search friend updates for topics, with search links. A user could also send messages to their friends through Cuil.
Cuil worked on an automated encyclopedia called Cpedia, built by algorithmically summarizing and clustering ideas on the web to create encyclopedia-like reports. Instead of displaying search results, Cuil would show Cpedia articles matching the searched terms. This was meant to reduce duplication by combining information into one document.
Cuil was available in 8 languages: English
, French
, German
, Italian
, Polish
, Portuguese
, Spanish
and Turkish
. More were planned.
involving a character, Fionn mac Cumhaill
, they erroneously refer to as Finn MacCuil . The company says that Cuil is Irish
for knowledge and hazel
.
Some linguists are unsure of this derivation and pronunciation, and note that the modern Irish word for hazel is spelled coll
(coill or cuill in genitive form, the former spelling having superseded the latter as a result of the Caighdeán Oifigiúil reforms of the mid-twentieth century). Foras na Gaeilge
, the official governing body of the Irish language, doubted the assertion that 'cuil' means 'knowledge'. "I am unaware myself of the meaning 'knowledge' being with the word 'cuil' in Irish," Stiofán Ó Deoráin, an official on Foras na Gaeilge's terminology committee, said. Even pre-Caighdeán dictionaries such as Dineen do not associate the cuil spelling with knowledge or hazel. Dinneen only lists two nouns and one adjective with the spelling cuil: "f., a fly, a horse-fly...", "f., a venomous aspect; great eagerness..." and "gs. of col, as a., wicked."
The company name had previously been spelled Cuill.
of Search Engine Watch
questioned the validity of Cuil's claim that it had the world's largest search engine index and criticized it for focusing on size rather than relevance
. However, despite reported problems with search results, Net Applications reported that for the last three days of July 2008, Cuil beat Google and Yahoo in the amount of time spent on a site after referral from a search engine.
According to an interview with a Cuil representative, while other Web 2.0
launches using massively parallel processing might fail with a slow down or crash, Cuil's architecture was responding with incomplete, "less-than-relevant results that then appear at the top of users' pages." Cuil's VP of communications Vince Sollitto said the search engine was experiencing heavy first-day overloads and they were "busy putting out fires." Sollitto said Cuil "will only improve with time. It's day one. Traffic is massive. We're new. There are bugs to fix, results to improve."
After the initial critical press coverage, Cuil was alleged to have caused issues for some websites, owing to how the Cuil indexing robot
polled certain sites (including under its pre-release name, Cuill). Many website owners reported that the Twiceler crawler repeatedly hit their site with randomly generated URLs in an attempt to find pages inaccessible by links. Others reported irrelevant images associated with their listing in Cuil's search results.
Search engine
A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits. Search engines help to minimize the time required to find information and the amount of information...
that organized web pages by content and displayed relatively long entries along with thumbnail
Thumbnail
Thumbnails are reduced-size versions of pictures, used to help in recognizing and organizing them, serving the same role for images as a normal text index does for words...
pictures for many results. Cuil said it had a larger index than any other search engine
Search engine
A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits. Search engines help to minimize the time required to find information and the amount of information...
, with about 120 billion web pages. It went live on July 28, 2008. Cuil's servers were shut down on September 17, 2010, with later confirmations the service had ended.
Cuil was managed and developed largely by former employees of Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
, Anna Patterson and Russell Power. The CEO and co-founder, Tom Costello, has worked for IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
and others. The company had raised $33 million from venture capital
Venture capital
Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...
firms including Greylock
Greylock
Greylock Partners is one of the oldest venture capital firms, founded in 1965, with committed capital of over $2 billion under management. The firm focuses on early stage companies in the consumer, enterprise software and infrastructure as well as semiconductor sectors.Today, Greylock operates out...
. Cuil's privacy policy, unlike that of other search engines, said it did not store users’ search activity or IP addresses.
History
Cuil launched in July 2008 with an index of 121,617,892,992 web pages. About one month after launch, Cuil's Product VP and search technologist, Louis Monier, quit the company citing disagreements with the CEO, Tom CostelloTom Costello
Tom Costello was an American jockey in the sport of Thoroughbred horse racing who won three American Classic Races.As a young boy, Costello lived at the New York House of Refuge, a place for juveniles convicted of crimes or adjudicated as vagrants...
. On December 19, 2008, BusinessWeek
BusinessWeek
Bloomberg Businessweek, commonly and formerly known as BusinessWeek, is a weekly business magazine published by Bloomberg L.P. It is currently headquartered in New York City.- History :...
listed Cuil as one of the most successful U.S. startups of 2008, based on the amount of money they raised. As of February, 2009, Cuil had 127 billion indexed pages. According to Alexa
Alexa Internet
Alexa Internet, Inc. is a California-based subsidiary company of Amazon.com that is known for its toolbar and Web site. Once installed, the toolbar collects data on browsing behavior which is transmitted to the Web site where it is stored and analyzed and is the basis for the company's Web traffic...
, the site reached a peak of just over 0.2% of worldwide internet users in late July 2008 and by September 12, 2008, it had dropped to 0.02% and ranked as the 5,340th site by traffic. By October 13, 2008, it had dropped to 0.005% and ranked as the 21,960th site in traffic.
Shutdown
PC MagazinePC Magazine
PC Magazine is a computer magazine published by Ziff Davis Publishing Holdings Inc. A print edition was published from 1982 to January 2009...
reported that on the morning of September 17, 2010 "employees were told about Cuil's demise [...] and the servers were taken offline five hours later." Laid-off employees were told they would not be paid. The shutdown reportedly came after an acquisition agreement fell through earlier in the week.
Features
A user could log into their FacebookFacebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
account via Cuil, which would then search friend updates for topics, with search links. A user could also send messages to their friends through Cuil.
Cuil worked on an automated encyclopedia called Cpedia, built by algorithmically summarizing and clustering ideas on the web to create encyclopedia-like reports. Instead of displaying search results, Cuil would show Cpedia articles matching the searched terms. This was meant to reduce duplication by combining information into one document.
Cuil was available in 8 languages: English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
, Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
, Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
and Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
. More were planned.
Name
The Irish ancestry of Anna Patterson's husband Tom Costello sparked the name Cuil, which the company states is taken from a series of Celtic folklore storiesFenian Cycle
The Fenian Cycle , also referred to as the Ossianic Cycle after its narrator Oisín, is a body of prose and verse centering on the exploits of the mythical hero Fionn mac Cumhaill and his warriors the Fianna. It is one of the four major cycles of Irish mythology along with the Mythological Cycle,...
involving a character, Fionn mac Cumhaill
Fionn mac Cumhaill
Fionn mac Cumhaill , known in English as Finn McCool, was a mythical hunter-warrior of Irish mythology, occurring also in the mythologies of Scotland and the Isle of Man...
, they erroneously refer to as Finn MacCuil . The company says that Cuil is Irish
Irish language
Irish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...
for knowledge and hazel
Hazel
The hazels are a genus of deciduous trees and large shrubs native to the temperate northern hemisphere. The genus is usually placed in the birch family Betulaceae, though some botanists split the hazels into a separate family Corylaceae.They have simple, rounded leaves with double-serrate margins...
.
Some linguists are unsure of this derivation and pronunciation, and note that the modern Irish word for hazel is spelled coll
Coll (letter)
Coll is the Irish name of the ninth letter of the Ogham alphabet , meaning "hazel-tree", which is related to Welsh collen pl cyll, and Latin corulus. Its Proto-Indo-European root was *. Its phonetic value is [k]....
(coill or cuill in genitive form, the former spelling having superseded the latter as a result of the Caighdeán Oifigiúil reforms of the mid-twentieth century). Foras na Gaeilge
Foras na Gaeilge
Foras na Gaeilge is the governing body of the Irish language, responsible for the promotion of the language throughout the island of Ireland. Its name can be translated into English as "The Irish Language Body", although the body has no official English-language name...
, the official governing body of the Irish language, doubted the assertion that 'cuil' means 'knowledge'. "I am unaware myself of the meaning 'knowledge' being with the word 'cuil' in Irish," Stiofán Ó Deoráin, an official on Foras na Gaeilge's terminology committee, said. Even pre-Caighdeán dictionaries such as Dineen do not associate the cuil spelling with knowledge or hazel. Dinneen only lists two nouns and one adjective with the spelling cuil: "f., a fly, a horse-fly...", "f., a venomous aspect; great eagerness..." and "gs. of col, as a., wicked."
The company name had previously been spelled Cuill.
Criticism
Cuil had received widely critical press coverage. Concerns were expressed about the website's slow response times, irrelevant or wrong search results and in at least one case, inappropriately pornographic images displayed alongside search results. Danny SullivanDanny Sullivan (technologist)
Danny Sullivan is the editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land, a blog that covers news and information about search engines, and search marketing.Search Engine Land is owned by Third Door Media, of which Danny Sullivan is partner and chief content officer...
of Search Engine Watch
Search Engine Watch
Search Engine Watch is a website that provides news and information about search engines and search engine marketing. Search Engine Watch was started by Danny Sullivan in 1996. In 1997, Sullivan sold it for an undisclosed amount to MecklerMedia...
questioned the validity of Cuil's claim that it had the world's largest search engine index and criticized it for focusing on size rather than relevance
Relevance (information retrieval)
In information science and information retrieval, relevance denotes how well a retrieved document or set of documents meets the information need of the user.-Types:...
. However, despite reported problems with search results, Net Applications reported that for the last three days of July 2008, Cuil beat Google and Yahoo in the amount of time spent on a site after referral from a search engine.
According to an interview with a Cuil representative, while other Web 2.0
Web 2.0
The term Web 2.0 is associated with web applications that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web...
launches using massively parallel processing might fail with a slow down or crash, Cuil's architecture was responding with incomplete, "less-than-relevant results that then appear at the top of users' pages." Cuil's VP of communications Vince Sollitto said the search engine was experiencing heavy first-day overloads and they were "busy putting out fires." Sollitto said Cuil "will only improve with time. It's day one. Traffic is massive. We're new. There are bugs to fix, results to improve."
After the initial critical press coverage, Cuil was alleged to have caused issues for some websites, owing to how the Cuil indexing robot
Web crawler
A Web crawler is a computer program that browses the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner or in an orderly fashion. Other terms for Web crawlers are ants, automatic indexers, bots, Web spiders, Web robots, or—especially in the FOAF community—Web scutters.This process is called Web...
polled certain sites (including under its pre-release name, Cuill). Many website owners reported that the Twiceler crawler repeatedly hit their site with randomly generated URLs in an attempt to find pages inaccessible by links. Others reported irrelevant images associated with their listing in Cuil's search results.