Is Cuil the Next Google-Killer?

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by: MICHAEL CHEUNG

Cuil (pronounced “cool”), a startup search engine launched Monday, is the latest in a line of aspiring Google-killers, boasting an index of 120 billion Web pages, “three times more than any other search engine,” according to the co-founders of Cuil.

Built with $33 million in venture capital, Cuil is made up of an all-star team of Web technology veterans. The founders are Tom Costello, creator of Xift, and Anna Patterson, creator of Recall, a technology now used by Google.

However, based on its Monday debut, Cuil poses little immediate threat to industry leader Google, or even its nearest competitors, Yahoo and Microsoft, in either relevance or breadth of results it delivers.

Darren Wilson, our technical consultant, tested out Cuil, and reported a poor experience.  Servers were often down,  and it delivered irrevelent results with slow loading times.

In a search for “google,” Google delivered 2,740,000,000 results in .1 seconds.  Cuil delivered 516,386,388 results in 9.8 seconds.  In a search for “cuil,” Google delivered 745,000 results in .14 seconds, while Cuil delivered 121,578 results in 9 seconds.  It appears that Cuil hasn’t even indexed itself yet; our search for “cuil” did not return the Cuil front page.

Not only were Cuil search results poor, but it lacked many of the features that Google offers.  When you type in a misspelled word into Google, it will attempt to find the correct spelling.  When you type in a misspelled word into Cuil, it displays the message “No results because of high load.”

Cuil’s claim to fame as the search engine with the biggest index has also been disputed.  Google pointed out that it regularly crawls over 1 trillion web pages to Cuil’s 120 billion.

The one area where Cuil excels, however, is user privacy. While Google stores user-specific searches for up to 18 months, Cuil never stores personally identifiable information or search histories.

Obama Urges Closer U.S.-Europe Ties

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by: MICHAEL CHEUNG

In one of the most theatrical events of his campaign, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama stood before a sea of 200,000 people in Berlin Thursday and called for closer ties between the United States and Europe.

Urging nations to “renew the goal of a world without nuclear weapons” and to unite to defeat terrorism, Obama’s rousing speech was often interrupted by applause from the huge crowd.

“In this new century, Americans and Europeans alike will be required to do more — not less,” Obama told the crowd.  “Partnership and cooperation among nations is not a choice; it is the one way, the only way, to protect our common security and advance our common humanity.”

For his arrival, Obama, dressed in a business suit, walked alone around the Victory Column, a giant pillar near the center of the park that is a monument to Prussian war victories of the 19th century.

It was clear from Obama’s enthusiastic reception in Berlin that many Europeans have high hopes for him, especially here in a country that has never forgotten U.S. efforts to rebuild Europe after World War II.

Although the German media embraced Obama warmly, assumptive Republican presidential candidate John McCain was quick to criticize Obama’s speech.  “I’d love to give a speech in Germany — a political speech or a speech that maybe the German people would be interested in,” McCain told a crowd in Ohio, “but I’d much prefer to do it as president of the United States rather than as a candidate.”

Asked on his campaign charter plane whether he drew inspiration from the famous Berlin speeches of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, Obama said: “They were presidents. I am a citizen. But obviously Berlin is representative of the extraordinary success of the post-World War II effort to bring the continent together, and bring the west together, and then later to bring the east and the west together.”

Opinion

by: MICHAEL CHEUNG

This is exactly the kind of global unity that Barack Obama will bring if he is elected to the White House.  The United States needs to gain back the world’s respect before it can succeed in the war against terror.  John McCain claims that he is an expert in foreign affairs.  But when you don’t know the difference between the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Czechslovakia, it is rather difficult to earn respect.

Some 200,000 people showed up for this rousing speech.  Barack Obama may not be particularly experienced in foreign affairs, but he has an ability John McCain sorely lacks — the ability to make others, no matter what country they come from, see what he sees, want what he wants.  This quality, perhaps, is more important than experience.