[Web4lib] CUIL doesn't seem very COOL

[Dan Lester]

Monday, July 28, 2008, 1:08:10 PM, you wrote:

> Same sort of results here, too. Slow servers, which I am
> attributing to the demand caused by the news stories. (if there were
> no interest in a new Google,  why this level of hype and interest?) 
> I answered that question with my appreciation of no advertising.
> (though advertising is useful when I'm shopping...)

I don't that to mean there won't be advertising.  After all, when
you're just starting, it probably isn't too easy to get a stable of
advertisers.

I didn't see the news story in the Globe and Mail as hype, just
another tech news story.  More interesting than some, less than
others. I just passed it on here since I hadn't seen mention of it
anywhere else, so wondered if others had.  It was an AP story, so
maybe I just happened to catch it there first. And the fact that
they're ex-googleites makes it of possible greater interest.

> The page is organized and more professional looking than Google.

I guess I don't see that at all.  It is different, but not sure how it
is better, what with multiple columns that still require scrolling.

> Does this matter ? I dunno. I do like the more professional
> presentation; it gives the information a little façade of credibility.

Facade may be the key word.  As noted previously, the information I
found wasn't non-credible, there just wasn't anything up to date.

> When I ran a search, it seems to be searching deeper into the web.

Looks to me like they grabbed the Internet Archive and/or other
sources that produced ancient stuff for the most part.  It would also
be possible to put up lots of content relatively quickly without going
out and burning vast quantities of bandwidth and server cycles.

> It pulled pages that technically no longer exist when I ran some web
> pages I took down years ago. Is that worth anything ?

Sure, it hit the Internet Archive.   That's valuable, but is there
anyway, even if not in Google (or maybe it is, I don't know).

I noted that among other sites it grabbed archives of web4lib from
over a decade ago, indexing daily digests, apparently.  One of the
links from my search on myself was to such an archive, and by
searching within the page found the reference several thousand lines
down.

I'm not jumping on them, since anyone has to start somewhere.  I hope
they have deep pockets behind them if they think they're going to be
the new Google...plenty of others have tried and failing, and the "big
original" may be failing as I type.

dan

-- 
The road goes on forever and the party never ends. REK, Jr. 
Dan Lester, Boise, ID