Chuckling at Cuil: Not Ready for Prime Time

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

[My reaction is similiar after trying it djf]
________________________________________
From: Lauren Weinstein [lauren () vortex com]
Sent: Monday, July 28, 2008 4:32 PM
To: David Farber
Cc: lauren () vortex com
Subject: Chuckling at Cuil: Not Ready for Prime Time

                  Chuckling at Cuil: Not Ready for Prime Time

                  http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000407.html


Greetings.  "The New York Times" today ran something of a fluff
piece ( http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/28/technology/28cool.html )
about a new search engine named "Cuil" ( http://www.cuil.com ),
which includes among its founding staff some former Google engineers.

Cuil (yeah, pronounced as "cool" -- too cute, eh?) appears to be
trying to position itself as the "anti-Google" -- particularly by
trumpeting a "we don't keep search logs" privacy policy
( http://www.cuil.com/info/privacy ).

I've spent some time experimenting with Cuil.  I'm afraid that my
initial impressions may be classified as "cruel" rather than cool by
some readers ...

Let's start with that "anonymous searches" privacy policy.  First
off, let's all keep in mind that what Cuil is doing is throwing out
data that they might otherwise collect, and that at any point --
either on their own volition or under orders from on high --
collecting identifying search information would typically be as
simple as changing a few lines of code.

Perhaps more to the point, I've never been opposed to the collection
of such data for reasonable periods of time in raw form.  It's
useful not only for personalized search implementations and tuning
of search algorithms and services over time, but also can be
invaluable for fighting network abuses of various sorts as well.  I
do become concerned when such data is held in non-anonymized forms
for long or indefinite periods, increasing the probability of it
being abused by outside parties demanding access to that log data
for their own purposes.

So it's really a matter of balance.  Frankly, when I see an
"absolute" privacy policy like Cuil's, I find myself questioning if
a reasonable balance is in place there, or rather if Cuil is
currently grandstanding for the sake of publicity, and how this will
affect the overall usefulness of their product.

And indeed, at least as it stands right now, Cuil needs some serious
work.  In my testing to date, Cuil's search results generally -- to
use a technical term -- suck.  Wacky results galore apparent
immediately, including combining unrelated results that should have
been separated, associating (over and over again!) completely
erroneous photos with the wrong texts, and masses of just plain
wrong or highly misleading results -- some of which are so
ridiculous that one wonders how they became associated within the
Cuil index in the first place.

However, I'll admit that in its current state there is a certain
entertainment value to Cuil.  I rarely laugh out loud when using
search engines, but I got some good chuckles and at least one good
"choked on the water I was drinking" guffaw from some of the
hilariously incorrect, twisted search results that Cuil proudly
presented.

No doubt Cuil will be working hard to improve and we'll see how they
develop.  But somehow I don't think that the Google folks are
sweating buckets about these guys right now -- unless Google plans
to start a "Get Some Laughs from Purposely Wrong Results (beta)"
search engine, that is.

--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren () vortex com or lauren () pfir org
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
   - People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, NNSquad
   - Network Neutrality Squad - http://www.nnsquad.org
Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com




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