Too Early To Hail Cuil As Google Killer

There's been a lot of excitement surrounding the launch of Cuil, the newest kid on the search engine block. Its founding management boasts executives with Google credentials, it can boast of $33 million in outside investments and the traffic on its opening day was so massive that the server spent much of the time in a spin. Cuil has generated buzz due to its unique interface and insistence that it can serve up the most relevant search results.

But CNN argues that it is premature to regard Cuil as a major player just yet. It is unlikely that Cuil can succeed where Yahoo and Microsoft have already admitted defeat. Cuil's biggest disadvantage is that it lacks the kind of support for targeted advertising that has made Google the king of the domain.

At present, Cuil has shied away from specifying a business model and displays no advertisements. Given that Yahoo has struck a deal with Google on search results advertising, it is seen as unlikely that Cuil can do any better. At the same time, if it does manage to convince consumers that its search results are the best, it may just prove to be a tasty acquisition target for one of the bigger boys already in the ring.