Comments on: Is CUIL the worst launch ever?

By: Patrick Byers

Patrick Byers — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 06:45:11 +0000

Thanks for your thoughts, all.

Watching CUIL has been kind of like watching a car wreck. Received a note today wondering why CUIL has been so quiet considering all this negative publicity.

Seems they should join the conversation. Maybe they have, but at this point, I’m afraid most people’s expectations are pretty low. It will take awhile before they are given the benefit of the doubt.

By: April Dunford

April Dunford — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 19:01:57 +0000

V1 product launches are hard. It’s hard to say what the product issues may or may not be (it wouldn’t surprise me if cuil was better than Google at certain kinds of searches) but clearly it isn’t better at Google at all (and by the looks of it, the most common) searches. That being the case, it would seem to make sense that marketing should dial up the messages around where they can prove they are better – privacy, aspects of the UI – and then teach us what sort of searches they are better at.
I do think cuil now has an opportunity to become part of this conversation (which by the way is massive) and recover if they do it quickly. What’s strange to me is how little we have heard from them directly now that everyone agrees the launch disappointed people. Why aren’t they responding?

By: NE

NE — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 16:02:43 +0000

So Amy, what you’re saying is Cuil’s spam filter at least is working (admitedly it’s hard to say with Cuil but…)

By: Amy Chen

Amy Chen — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 19:23:31 +0000

It would be ok to have all the hype if the site was worth it. However, this site is below sub par. I wanted to see how accurate and up to date the site is, so i typed in this new site http://www.dentalpricecompare.com that launched earlier this week to see what results would come back. Not a one! Not even for the actual site, seriously. How is this supposed to be better than Google?

By: Denise Wymore

Denise Wymore — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 17:51:14 +0000

I love the Twitter whale. I don’t always like seeing him, but just the fact that the folks at Twitter had fun with their “success” makes me love them.

CUiL……they should take a lesson from iPod. Late to the MP3 party and just came out quietly. No screaming about how much better they were than those others — let the users do that.

Of course, in CUIL’s case, that won’t happen either.

By: Jim Parsons

Jim Parsons — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 15:47:36 +0000

Launching a product or service is a process not an event… something I thought engineers and developers understood.

By: Hani

Hani — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 15:26:41 +0000

Completely agree. Worst. Launch. I’m left wondering if they had any practical testers!
Forcing users to scroll down ‘below the fold’ for results is a terrible idea. And the images appear completely irrelevant to the results.

They’re on twitter @cuil — for sending feedback.

By: Shel Horowitz

Shel Horowitz — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 12:27:31 +0000

I somehow missed all the buzz, Patrick, and this is the first I’ve heard of CUIL. It’s working at the moment. Nice and fast, but I found the presentation of results very hard to scan, and yes, the picture matching is very peculiar.

Quite frankly, I’ve been considerably more frustrated in my very slight exploration of twitter.

By: Rob Lewis

Rob Lewis — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 09:09:11 +0000

I think they could have done a little better on the product before launch. After doing some of my own searches, I am so far from impressed that I am beginning to think the Cuil should have done WAY more testing before coming to market. Worst launch ever? It still has yet to be seen, but definitely a step in the wrong direction.