[Web4lib] CUIL doesn't seem very COOL - other search engines worth looking at?

[Frances, Melodie]

I don't like either display - something in between would be nice -
having kind of the list of google so that you scan the page easily, but
the ordering and arrangement that cuil does.

I do like seeing google get some competition - competition will
(hopefully) encourage them to improve upon their product and quit
treating it ONLY as a marketing tool.

Melodie Morgan Frances
Head of Cataloging
Graduate Theological Union
mfrances at gtu.edu
510-649-2521

-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org
[mailto:web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of B.G. Sloan
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2008 2:12 PM
To: web4lib at webjunction.org
Subject: Re: [Web4lib] CUIL doesn't seem very COOL


I don't like the CUIL displays at all. 

It's almost like CUIL's business model is: If we make our site look as
little like Google as possible, people will think we're "cool". Here's
another obvious example of the "not Google" approach. Google's homepage
is mostly white space. CUIL's homepage is, you guessed it, mostly BLACK
space. Maybe they're trying to be the anti-Google?

Someone called the Gogle display "primitive". I think Google's displays
are effective. I agree 100% with Thomas Dowling on this one. Like Thomas
said, there's a reason why Google looks like it does. It works for a lot
of people (myself included).

Bernie Sloan
Sora Associates

--- On Mon, 7/28/08, Thomas Dowling <tdowling at ohiolink.edu> wrote:

From: Thomas Dowling <tdowling at ohiolink.edu>
Subject: Re: [Web4lib] CUIL doesn't seem very COOL
To: web4lib at webjunction.org
Date: Monday, July 28, 2008, 4:45 PM

On 07/28/2008 03:53 PM, Day, James wrote:

> Google's search results are still very primitive compared to other
> search sites.  Where are the visual previews, faceted results,
> clustering, and customizable themes and page layouts, etc.?  
> 

What you find primitive many other people call streamlined.  Or 
"non-distracting."  They don't want to pay attention to the
search 
engine; they want to get to a good link beyond the search engine.  (Flip

open the "satisficing" section in Don't Make Me Think and chant
Roy 
Mantra #1: Only librarians like to search...)

The folks at Google are not unaware of these features, and they've 
chosen not to implement them.  AFAICS, neither Yahoo nor MSN have gone 
many steps down that road either, and they're the ones peddling the 
hardest to catch up.  Just because the Big Three all do things one way 
doesn't make it the only right way, but you better understand why they 
do it that way before setting out to do it some other way.

-- 
Thomas Dowling
tdowling at ohiolink.edu



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