It’s true! Louis Monier who was plucked from Google to join Cuil has bailed out a month after launch.
I’m not surprised by this, and it will hurt Cuil. Louis is a search powerhouse and his departure clearly underscores the short comings of the new search engine. While Cuil claims it can index the internet faster and cheaper than Google it means nothing if they can’t provide relevant content for most searches!
Without that crucial facet of search they won’t get the eyeballs to switch from Google and they won’t amount to any kind of competition. In fact they may just be relegated to a really cool experiment.
That would be an unfortunate end for the search engine startup since competition is what accelerates innovation. So, I hope that Cuil regroups and focuses their efforts on producing relevant results for every search. With the launch of 123People.com I’m amazed at how relevant their results are for a search on my name. Granted they are using Yahoo! to produce the results but boy they sure are more relevant than Cuil. Perhaps Cuil should drop parts of the index such as images and focus on web pages till they sort out the algo. In the meantime they have to find a replacement for Louis!
For more on this story see the TechCrunch story.
