Cuil, a company of ex-Googlers that developed a search engine of the same name, released a new streaming feature today that displays real-time search results in a box on the site. It’s intended to help you watch the conversation about your search term unfold on the web. You can pop the box out of the Cuil web page and move it to another place on your desktop. A dial at the bottom of the box lets you determine whether you’d like to see streamed search results from the last one, four or 12 hours or the past day. And on the right-hand side of the feature, there’s a “hotness meter” that measures the amount of chatter going on about your search term on the web.
Initially billed as a potential Google killer, Cuil attracted gobs of media attention when it launched last year, yet quickly received criticism that its search capability was weaker than Google’s. The company has since faded from the limelight and has seen traffic to its search engine fall over the last year. Tapping into the real-time trend may help Cuil get out of its rut. The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company received $33 million in funding from Madrone Capital Partners, Tugboat Ventures and Greylock Partners last year and has a valuation of $200 million.
It will not put them back on the map.
Perhaps the worst brand name I have ever seen.
TO’B
No.
@Om – i have used this feature on Cuil around a month back. I m not sure if i was just a beta tester for them at that time.
doesn’t look like a killer feature to attract people from google/yahoo/bing.
just a gimmick. I feel bad for these guys. they really screwed up. Now their product has to be even better than first expected for people to give them another chance. A very tall order.
Whether it puts them back on the map or not, the feature is useful to have, and intuitive as well. I like it. Nice job, Cuil!
Why does every search company HAVE to be a Google Killer? No one will kill Google but it doesn’t mean that somebody new can’t do something different! I find myself swapping more between search engines now. Instead of constantly rephrasing search terms on Google I flick between Bing and Cuil and Google. Innovation is good.