Cuil Fails At Naming Itself. Preview of their Future Failure.
There is an overwhelming amount of press today about the new search engine cuil.com.
So far, I have learned that is was started by ex-Googlers and that it is pronouced “cool.”
Yes, nearly everyone is saying there is no way they can beat Google or even come close to competing in the search market for all sorts of technical reasons but I have yet to see anyone come right out and tell it like it is:
It will fail because nobody can pronounce it. And when you finally learn how they would like you to pronouce their madeup word you feel like punching them in the face.
I never liked the whole “drop a vowel” school of web 2.0 site naming (fickr, et. al.) but this whole make up a word and make it sound like a word we already have is truly ridiculous.
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Tags: Cuil, cuil.com, Google, new media, Search, Search Engines, Searching, Web search engine
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July 28, 2008 9:53 pm
5 Comments
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The Semantic Puzzle | Cuil looks good, but does it know German? — July 29, 2008 @ 9:13 am
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By Frank, July 29, 2008 @ 3:15 pm
What’s funny is if you “Cuil” the term “Cuil” you don’t get results about the site, but if you Google “Cuil” you do ?!?!
Not a good first showing.
By cheney, July 31, 2008 @ 12:11 am
This will be studied later on as a case of failure that was massively hyped in the media.
By Dube, July 31, 2008 @ 2:38 am
Cuil is definitely not cool. The name choice is quite unfortunate. It’s great if a company can invent a really catchy word for a name. But like you said, NOT when the word actually exists and your just spelling it really strangely.
By Matt Keegan, August 1, 2008 @ 4:06 pm
I can already hear business textbook publishers updating their information about great product failures and adding Cuil to a list containing Edsel and New Coke.
Personally, I don’t mind the name, but I do mind how the product doesn’t work. Bragging that you have something that is better than Google is one thing, unable to perform even at a basic level is a travesty.