Search engine Cuil is valued at absurdly high level of $200M, despite flop
What were they thinking?
Investors valued the new search engine company Cuil at a stratospheric level of $200 million post-money in December, during the company’s second round of funding before the search engine launched.
The company, which hyped itself leading up to its launch two months ago, among other things boasting of a larger index of pages than Google, was met with very critical reviews. There’s nothing really compelling about Cuil. It looks destined to struggle. It’s… Continue Reading
Roundup: Scrabulous returns, Dell’s music player and more
Here’s the latest action:
Scrabulous returns as Wordscraper — The popular Facebook application was redesigned and relaunched less than 48 hours after it was taken down due to a potential legal tussle with Scrabble-maker Hasbro.
Dell tests digital music player — The computer maker stopped selling players in 2006 due to disappointing sales, but it has a new offering that could go on sale as early as September.
Job site Monster acquires search company Trovix for $72.5 million in cash — Monster… Continue Reading
Review: Out of the gate, Cuil is ambitious but flawed
After not much fanfare but plenty of anticipation, a new search engine called Cuil has launched. In spite of all the noise about the founders’ pedigree and the company’s index size, the only thing that makes a search engine tick is the relevance of its results across several dimensions. I spent an hour testing the service last night and found it has made an ambitious and interesting start out of the gate.
When evaluating a… Continue Reading
Cuil might just be cool enough to become the Google-killer in search
Even though I try to approach every startup with an open mind, there are few companies more likely to provoke knee-jerk skepticism than those claiming to compete head-to-head with Google in Web search. But a new company called Cuil looks like it could actually give Google some real competition.
For one thing, the executives behind Menlo Park, Calif.-based Cuil (pronounced “cool,” and previously spelled “Cuill”) should have a good idea of what’s needed to take on… Continue Reading