Cuil Proves the Bubble Is Back

MattSparkes writes "Cuil may only have launched this week, but it seems that they're already enjoying late-'90s boom-style comforts. 'Lunch is ordered in every single day. Huge fridges burst with snacks and drinks. Bowls of strawberries and muffins lie around the rest area. The company pays for a personal trainer and gym membership for everyone. A doctor calls round each Friday, after the weekly barbeque, to see if everyone's in good health. Employees drift in an out at times that suit themselves.' Seems like an awesome place to work, but how long will their $25 million VC funding last at this rate?"

How Long?

[doomicon]

" how long will their $25 million VC funding last at this rate?"

Based on my late 90's Start up runs in NYC, I would say the Doctor and Free Gym Personal Trainer will be gone in two weeks, the food in a month, and 75% of the employees in 3 months.

Stories like this may even bring PuD back to F**kedcompany postings.

Whatever.

[MrMacman2u]

Cuil Sucks. Seriously, it sucks real hard.

I liked their privacy policy and thought their approach to searh results was unique and fresh, it just needed a bit of getting used to.

So, I have tried using it in place of Google since it was announced.

I gave up today in shear frustration.

Take me home Google! I missed you so!

The Bubble HAS Burst.

[imstanny]

...for financial institutions. I work at a Financial Firm in NYC, and we don't even have coffee makers in the kitchen! And they took away the vending machine. Bottled water has gone up from $12 for 2 cases to $16. I've been reduced to filling up my bottles at the sink, and shorting Google. If you're a Shadenfreude, you've enjoyed this post.

Free Lunches and stuff

[KillerEggRoll]

I just left a company (unfortunately) that had lunch catered daily, stocked drinks, had a heavily-used foosball table, and (un)officially had flex time among many other benefits. This company happens to be a market leader with no debt and VERY profitable revenue stream.

The company was fortunate to have certain events happen at opportune times, but the benefits were needed to lure a skilled workforce into joining the team. Cuil will probably fall flat, but the "excesses" are warranted IMO.

:-( If I didn't have to relocate, I would never have left.

Re:Cuil Proves Nothing

[JonnyDomestik]

Well I am an economist actually and while I don't think that anybody is saying that this sort of spending caused the bubble, they are symptomatic of the sort of investing that happens in a bubble. Of course, with the economy going the way it is, all this is pretty much moot since there is clearly not a lot of speculative investment going on.

Re:If the bubble's back, it will burst soon

[quadrox]

When I tried out cuil the first time (first slashdot post) it had lots of problems finding just about anything. But I just tried again today and got pretty much all the results I wanted. Not all of them in the top spot, but the results have improved quite a bit.

If they keep improving Cuil may well become better than google (in terms of relevant results). Right now it's so-so, but that doesn't mean you should completely dismiss it.

I for one am looking forward to seing some real competition and new features. I wish them the best of luck.

Re:Cuil Proves Nothing

[mikey_boy]

yeah, the difference being that if you search without the quotes, google returns a shedload of results. Cuil still returns nothing:

cuil search [cuil.com]

google search [google.co.uk]

Re:Cuil Proves Nothing

[Anml4ixoye]

I put up a page to help compare the results:

http://www.cornetdesign.com/googlevscuil.html [cornetdesign.com]

Did the same thing for Live:

http://www.cornetdesign.com/livevscuil.html [cornetdesign.com]

Re:Cuil Proves Nothing

[Stormwatch]

Erm... and google's results are so much better?

Yes, they are [google.com] -- if your search does not begin with a quotation mark, which means "look for this exact phrase".

Re:Cuil Proves Nothing

[elrous0]

I get "no results" for even common web searches, and bizarre mistakes even on the occasions when it DOES work (showing inappropriate pictures beside entries, shwoing results that have nothing to do with the search term, etc.). Their claims of being better than Google are not only laughable, but probably cross over into outright fraud. Anyone stupid enough to invest in such a company DESERVES their fucking. The whole thing reeks of con job.

Re:The bubble is back!

[AmaDaden]

It's a bit messy but it's something like this...
1) barrow some stock from some and promise to give it back in the following few(i forget the longest you can do this for) months.
2) Sell it.
3) Wait for said stock to fall.
4) Buy it at what you hope is a lower price.
5) give it back to the owner.

It's called selling short because you can only have it sold for a 'short' period before you have to buy it back again. Basically you bet that said stock will fall. As strange as it sounds it's fairly common in Wall Street

Culi

[Atin]

It's important to note that while Cuil is a search engine, Culi [NSFW] is, well, not.

Re:The Bubble HAS Burst.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're a Shadenfreude, you've enjoyed this post.

off topic, but you can't be a Schadenfreude, you can only experience or have Schadenfreude. Then again, you spelled it 'Shadenfreude' so maybe the two are not the same thing ... ?

Re:The bubble is back!

[flitty]

Naked Short Selling (while we are off topic) is doing the same thing, but borrowing the same "stock" several times (since you have a short time before you actually have to hand over the paper) and creating "virtual" stocks that you then sell short. Absolutely destructive and devaluing of stocks. For a little audio discussion, I think it's this link [npr.org]

Re:Cuil Proves Nothing

[sm62704]

I think that the bigger proof is that their product sucks ass

I tried it last week when the other article about cuil was posted here. My thoughts on it were:

1. I did a search for "mcgrew cigarettes". Google's third result was a K5 article I wrote several years ago, How to quit smoking cigarettes. Cuil's idiotic column layout makes it hard to determine if it's the second or the fourth result, but rather than return the K5 article, it returns a completely unrelated site (tobacco.org) that copied the intro (no permission, but fair use) and a link to the K5 article. Lame.
2. The site is IMO ugly as sin. It looks like a 1998 Quake site.
3. iFrames. Ugh.
4. Columns? Why?
5. Cuil returns 47 results on three pages, many of which on the first page lack the word "mcgrew" or "cigarettes". Google returns 12,900 results, all of the results on the first page have both "mcgrew" and "cigarettes" in the text.

In fact, this thing is completely lame in every respect I can think of. It's so lame crutches won't work, not even a wheelchair will make this thing mobile.

It's doomed to failure. Google has kicked ass on every other search engine out there, and Cuil even gets its ass kicked by Microsoft's search. Now, THAT'S pathetic. Anybody foolish enough to invest in Cuil deserves to lose his money.

That's unusual!

[KNicolson]

We have a subsidised restaurant and sandwich bar. The coffee bars take the piss out of Starbucks.

We have a subsidised restaurant, if you like sub-school dinner fare. Coffee is just piss.

Free coffee and soft drinks from machines in each corner of each floor in each building.

There's a water filter that's rather unhygenic even after boiling. We get one free drink and a snack (rice cracker, if you're lucky) once a month.

Um, stale sandwiches and fruit left over from long meetings..?

Occassional left-over food too.

Fully stocked gym, several trainers, but only one working at a time, one physiotherapist. Open 24/7. Treatment room looks well equipped although I've never needed to used it.

We can get a corporate rate at a local gym chain. Last time I asked it was about 10% off from 5,000 yen per month, so it's cheaper to join as an individual during a promotion.

Doctor is in his office 5 times a week. Two nurses are always there.

At least we have that too. Compulsory chest xrays and barium meals every year to keep that healthy glow.

If anything, we'll complain when others are coming in at 8am and not going home until 8pm. People working long hours is not productive, it creates a bad atmosphere, if there's work for two people, employ a second person.

My boss moans that I don't stay until 8 pm or later...

This is a massive company in the UK. My site alone employs 2,000 people.

This is a massive company in Japan. Almost all are the same.

Re:Cuil Proves Nothing

[TheLink]

Cuil is not even as good as Yahoo's search or Microsoft's search.

Yahoo:
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=aes+zip+linux [yahoo.com]

Microsoft:
http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=aes+zip+linux [live.com]

These two are actually competitive in search quality nowadays and they still have trouble getting Google's share.

So what are the odds Cuil is going to get anywhere?

When Google first started, I recall they _were_ significantly better than their competitors (Altavista, Infoseek, hotbot etc).

Seriously what does Cuil do better for users than Google, Yahoo or Microsoft?

Re:The bubble is back!

[LotsOfPhil]

It's not messy (as in complicated) and it isn't strange. It is just a way to bet that a stock will go down. No stranger than a put option.
I am not sure where the terms "long" and "short" come from, but I don't think that short has any relation to what you are saying. You borrow the stock for an indeterminate amount of time. The entity loaning you the stock has the ability to ask for it back at any time.
It is uncommon because, unlike owning a stock/being "long", you have unlimited downside risk. If the stock keeps going up, you lose more and more money. Also, there has to be someone willing to lend the stock.
As always, Wikipedia:
Short selling [wikipedia.org]
Put option [wikipedia.org]

Re:Cuil Proves Nothing

[rubycodez]

oh yeah, try "beef gurnsey hoof", cuil is useless

google returns over 8,700 pages

Re:Cuil Proves Nothing

[databyss]

No results were found for: COBOL

If youve checked your spelling, you could try using fewer or different keywords to broaden your search.

Still no luck? Send us your feedback: [e-mail]

Re:Cuil Proves Nothing

[syukton]

Everyone blames oil companies for their record profits, when they should be watching profit MARGINS, which have remained static for the past decade for the majors like Exxon and others.

Can you back up your assertion about profit margins? I took a look myself, and In 1997, the gross and net income of Exxon-Mobil was $137B and $8.4B respectively, or a profit margin of ~6%. The same respective values in 2007 are $404B and $40.6B, or a profit margin of ~10%. Those numbers also represent a 4.83x increase in profit. I'm not an accountant however, so perhaps I'm misreading something.

Data: SEC 10-K filing for Exxon-Mobil for FY '97 [sec.gov] and FY '07 [sec.gov]. Save the FY '07 document and remove the header garbage, then save it as .html. It's much prettier that way.