What to think of Cuil

A lot of folks asked me about my opinion on Cuil last days, and although i think it’s way to early to state any opinion on their chances of succes i do think there is something important to mention that’s missing in the current buzz.

The real meaning of Cuil will not be found in the size of it’s index (really guys, there is a threshold above which size will work against you…). Also, though important in the end, the quality of the results and the looks of the interface aren’t nearly as interesting as the current buzz would make us believe.

What is interesting is the fundamentally different approach towards ‘Search’ that Cuil claims to be taking.

Reading their FAQ some words grabbed my mind:
“explore fully the subject of your search”
“Our aim is to give you a wider range of more detailed results and the opportunity to explore more fully the different ideas behind your search.”
“We think that if you are interested in content rather than popularity, you’ll find our approach more useful.”

As some of you may know i´m a bit worried about the converging mental models in our minds because of Google´s dominance. This convergence has a lot to do with the way Google organizes it´s results. There is a huge risk of promoting non obvious self-fulfilling prohesies because of Google’s ranking and presentation of results.

Cuil seems to be taking a different approach, recognizing the absence of a universal thruth and helping us determine what is relevant to us given our personal context at this point in time. They do so by providing the tools to explore the information (content) that is relevant to the current query, not just presenting popular answers.

The purpose of Cuil would be to broaden our perspective on issues that matter.

Given the importance of Search in todays society i would prefer an approach like this to one that is narrowing down our view of the world.