A new search engine with the name Cuil.com launched yesterday. Cuil is an old Irish word for knowledge and it is pronounced "cool". Could Cuil be the new Google killer that so many companies tried to build?

What's special about Cuil?
During the past few years, many search engines have tried to be the next Google. None of them has succeeded. The difference between these companies and Cuil is the team that stand behind the project:

Anna Patterson: worked on Google's search index
Russell Power: worked on Google's search index
Louis Monier: founder of the AltaVista search engine
Tom Costello: worked on IBM's WebFountain project.
The team behind Cuil knows search very well and they have worked behind the scenes at Google and other major search providers.

Why does Cuil think that it's better than Google?
Cuil has four major claims with which it wants to distinguish itself from Google:

1. Cuil claims to have the biggest index
Cuil claims that its index is bigger than Google's and that this is necessary if you want to return relevant results for topics that aren't very popular.

2. Cuil thinks that popularity is not as important as Google says
If Cuil's concept of indexing succeeds, PageRank and linking might be a thing of the past. Cuil thinks that popularity is useful but not for very complex searches.
According to their website, Cuil tries to analyze the content of web pages and to put it into a greater context.

3. Cuil uses a new results page format
Instead of a long list, Cuil returns the results in three columns and it adds images to the search results when possible.
Cuil also offers roll-over definitions and offers ideas to refine your search.

4. Cuil does not collect user data
In contrast to other search engines, Cuil does not log any personally identifiable information. IP addresses, names or cookies are not stored.
That means that user data cannot be turned over to others. AOL published private user information in August 2006 and Google currently has to turn over massive amounts of user data to Viacom.

Results really better than Google's?
In test searches, Cuil returned quite good results. Whether they are better or worse than Google's results probably depends on the query and the needs of the searcher.

Cuil seems to understand the different meaning of words. For example, if you search for "tiger" then Cuil will return results for the animation, the operating system with that name, the golf player and companies with that word in the name on the first result page.

It's hard to tell whether Cuil will be a Google killer or not. There's more to it than simply having a large index and good search results. If that was enough, Yahoo would have a much bigger market share.

Google already did a blog post in reaction to Cuil so the new search engine seems to be something that Google gives a lot of attention.