How many cool ways is there to spell "cool"? Kewl is very popular amongst chat and gamers, and now we have "cuil". Some ex-Googlers decided to give Google a run for their own money by creating YASE (yet another search engine) called www.cuil.com. Like Google, Cuil starts out with a very nondescript front page where you enter your search term, though Cuil sports a black background to differentiate it from Google right up front. That's where the differences start, and it gets better from there.
Rather than displaying search results in the plain-Jane text that Google does, Cuil brings back a very nice looking and well organized multi-column page including a thumbnail of a header, portrait or graphic from that link's page. Well, sometimes it does but it's not always accurate. 
On a search for my name, Cuil associated a picture of James Mitchell Ashley (can't say I've sported a suit like that in some time) and a cowboy dude from what looks like an album cover. Obviously Cuil has some perfecting to do but I like where it's going.
What else is different about Cuil? They say they don't analyze their users, they analyze web pages, ranking them for relevancy, inter-relationships and coherency, not just popularity. (Hmm...I'm not a search algorithm expert but that could mean just about anything.) They also say Cuil searches 3x the web pages as Google and 10x more than Microsoft Live Search. Cuil also organizes results into tabs. I've often wonder why Google couldn't distinguish the difference between Fender guitars and fender benders.
Look Ma, no advertising. No signs of that yet in Cuil's search results but you'd have to guess that's in Cuil's future as usage builds up. I've only just tried Cuil so I don't have much hands on experience with it to say whether I like or hate it yet.
One more thing. Cuil lists a general council on their exec team. Not that I want to get any nasty-grams from some lawyer but I always question when startups have full time legal council. Seems to me there's usually two reasons: either there's lots of business contracts to work on, or you're expecting enough IP disputes or litigation from competitors (Google?) that it's better to start stocking up the war chest early. Don't know if I'm right but that's what make sense to me.
Let me know what you think of Cuil, if you use it, think its a waste or like what you see.
Like this? Here are some of Mitchell's recent posts.
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Podcast/Video: Xobni & Co-Founder Matt Brezina
Is Live Search Making Headway Against Google?
Live Mesh Sighting For Macs
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Podcast: Simon Crosby - Why Simon Loves Hyper-V
Product Reviews:
Microsoft Live Mesh Google App Engine
LiveNewsCameras.com Xobni Outlook pluginRecent Converging Network Blog Posts:
Get Ready For XaaS Everywhere
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Back From Hiatus, Saved by Web 2.0 Technology
It Takes a Village.. ah, actually, being there first and tons of hard work
Favorite Book Recommendations:
The Big Switch
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Clear BloggingCheck out Mitchell's
Converging On Microsoft Podcast. Current Podcast Episode: Security Mike Gets Serious About SecurityAlso visit Mitchell's personal blog The Converging Network and SSAATY Security Podcast.
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General "council"???
First, not to nitpick (well, actually, yes...) but the word is "counsel" not "council".
More important, the fact that someone designates a "general counsel" may mean a number of things. A couple of my clients have listed me as "general counsel" on their websites even though I serve that role in my capacity as their outside legal counsel, not as an employee of the company.
Even if Cuil has a full time lawyer in their management group, it is very likely for a reason that you did not list - working on matters related to raising money. Debt and equity capital both require extensive documentation and negotiation. Having an experienced transactional attorney on the team can be a very cost-effective move.
Cuil
Though I found the speed at which it returned results for my search to be quick, and the layout to be pleasing, I was disappointed. I got back multiple pages that were merely different pages on the same site. Relevance should take into consideration the parent site and not fill your results with a plethora of similar pages from one site. I think they have a bold approach but it needs refinement.
Cuil
At first I thought WOW, I like the page layout. But then I did a search on Solaris 10 and received some info. It then tried to refine the search to Solaris 10 X86 and never saw a page refresh, I just received the smae information. I then tried a couple of completely different searches and had the same result.
Update I just tried the same search again it is working this am.
I am not moving away from google anytime soon, but will add this to my list of tools.