What do you think - Googlers are smarter than ex-Googlers or vice versa. If you think that ex-Googlers are, your days of using Google as your default search engine are over. What is new and better now a days is CUIL. Cuil(an old Irish word for knowledge pronounced as "cool") is all the buzz since its launch the day before yesterday. It's a new and purportedly "better" search engine started by ex-Googlers.

Cuil claims that it searches more pages on the Web than anyone else—three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft. It may be, but my initial few searches showed that it has a smaller database than Google and also the page ranking algorithms are not as good as Goolge. But really Cuil is a very fast search engine and very cool (as it is pronouced).

It gives you certain widget and result organization is also very good. I do like the look of the results pages, if only because they are a welcome change from the usual style of results pages on Google and other commonly used search engines. Instead of usual text results it gives you a feel of the actual link, a small screen shot of each search result. (have a look at the screen capture of results of searching Adobe). There also offers tabs that organized the results and the neat "Explore by category" widget on the right, something very similar to an old search engine called CLUSTY. You can also arrange your results in 2 coloumns or 3 coloumns.

Let's have a look at complete feature list offered by Cuil:

Drilldown: “Explore By Category” widget with a list of subjects related to your search. If you roll-over a category, it will open and show refinements related to your search.

Roll-over definitions: Really nice. When you pause on a subject suggested by “Explore By Category,” a definition of that term may appear. This gives you additional information to help you decide whether or not to click on that term and so save you some time.

Tabs: Cuil helps you to search by offering you other choices and suggestions. Cuil will show you “Tabs” that suggest ways to clarify your search.

Navigation suggestion: When you type a query, sometimes you'll see a search suggestion with an icon representing a website. Click on this link and you will go directly to that website.

Their claim of bigger database still needs to be verified. When I searched for my blog "akashthoughts.blogspot.com", cuil gave no results while google produced 3 pages. Same thing happened for many other searches. But I read at many places that it gave more results than google for many users.

If Cuil can prove what it claims than there is a certain worry for google. People will prefer Cuil to Google because of its cool look and more options. In turn, Google will loose a big amount it earns by showing Ads and 'sponsored links' on its search page. Let's wait before giving any conclusive words for Cuil's future.