So Google has a new competitor, and judging by the snails-pace load times on release day Cuil (pronounced "cool", although what the French make of the name I can only imagine!) proved popular. A quick search for Metrica proved its accuracy for text at least, a search for media analysis and media evaluation showed it finds the right companies!  The site previews were a little baffling however (take the link to our "About us" page -  I can't remember ever seeing this guy roaming around Metrica Towers!)

On the whole, the consensus in the office is that Cuil is, well, cool. The layout is neat and speaks the language of people like me who are surrounded by technology but have only really got into it since they dumbed it down a bit. We've established that the search engine works. But here's the thing - why stop there?

Cuil's creators are obviously smart people with their fingers on the pulse of trends in web usage. So with analysis of web content and web usage gaining importance by the second, why doesn't Cuil have any social media search functions or access to web analytics tools as part of the service? I wouldn't have expected blog tracking of the sophistication of Buzz Logic or Radian 6 (or Metrica, of course!) but I find it baffling that Cuil haven't at least paid lip service to the idea. They could be in development of course, but if I was up against Google, with it's vast array of additional products and services (let's not forget Google news for mainstream web content) I'd have been tempted to finish developing my service before I launched it.

In a straight "search engine to search engine" fight, no one really expects Cuil to beat Google. And with people pleading for more control of the information on the web, I couldn't help but feel that, pretty as it is, Cuil's offering is a bit of a step backwards.