The NewsDemon Blog

A group of former Google engineers Monday unveiled a new search engine they hope will challenge the Internet giant’s supremacy. Cuil, (pronounced “cool”), takes a different tack than previous threats to Google.

Instead of concentrating on links to Web pages, Cuil focuses on a Web page’s actual content. The venture-financed search engine also presents the data in a different manner – a horizontal layout that includes images rather than Google’s low-key plain text displayed vertical.

Privacy is another area the four founding engineers hope will differentiate Cuil. The search engine won’t hold onto search histories, unlike Google.

Cuil also boasts it searches 120 billion Web pages. In 2005, when Google stopped publicly divulging the size of its search database, the Internet giant said it had a database of 8.2 billion Web locations. Friday, after public prodding, Google said it searches 1 trillion Web links.

Cuil, who’s name originates from Celtic folklore, is the child of three former Google engineers: Anna Patterson, Russell Power and Louis Monier, along with Tom Costello, Patterson’s former-IBM search husband. In 2004, Google acquired Patterson’s last search engine.

Cuil’s inventors have a tough road to hoe to compete with Google. Searches for Usenet and Newsgroups are much different than Google results and seem to partial more to blog community sites rather than useful resources at the moment.