Comments on: Cuil, the Google Killer is not so Hot (Anymore)- Losing all the initial interest?

By: Raja Ramachandran

Raja Ramachandran — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:26:01 +0000

Guys, I guess the caption “Google killer” for “cuil” has been created more of a word of mouth & viral phenomenon, and the search engine never positioned itself as a google killer.The main reason why people assumed it as a healthy google competitor is, the reason being that top google engineers have started “Cuil”.

cheers:-)

By: Piyush Gupta

Piyush Gupta — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 20:13:09 +0000

Not even a Google-Like product can beat Google unless bundled with strong cognitive science expert research.

A fundamental is that Google is beyond the relevant results. It is now more about re-capturing the behaviour of their loyal community base.

By: Ashish

Ashish — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 15:54:01 +0000

@poseidon It’s not about a US product or an Indian startup!
I understand your concern over the coverage – but as you said, it’s about the lesson
> +ve thing being product positioning.
> -ve part is ofcourse the execution.

Many startups are doing a good job of execution, but aren’t able to position themselves clearly – Cuil solved this problem and to me, it was a huge success (after all, how many bloggers have talked about other ‘google killers’?)

We do stay in the context (of domestic startups) but at the same time, it’s really important to take a leaf out of Silicon Valley – where the real ‘tech’ action is!

-Ashish

By: Mahesh

Mahesh — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:11:33 +0000

@Poseidon

To Deliver this Message :”If you are a startup, one thing that you should learn from Cuil is the ‘Art of Product Positioning’ :”.

KEY CONCEPT after all.

By: Gautam Kshatriya

Gautam Kshatriya — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:27:11 +0000

@Nishit – agree with you fully here. I wonder, weren’t the Cuil team aware of the fact that their search results weren’t up to scratch? Given the pedigree that these guys have, I cannot quite believe that they made this move. *Surely* they were well connected with top bloggers / pundits etc, and *surely* they got some solid feedback (which should have alerted them to their failings). So what’s the real story? What went down?

They had all the makings of a ‘remarkable’ product – indeed *everybody* wanted them to succeed. At the end – despite their great positioning, they didn’t(check out my Book Review of Purple Cow – Seth Godin’s guide on how to make your product remarkable here: http://www.moneyvidya.com/blog/?p=305)

Gautam Kshatriya
gautam.kshatriya@moneyvidya.com
http://www.moneyvidya.com

By: poseidon

poseidon — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 10:51:24 +0000

what happened Ashish? why have you suddenly started covering international start ups ? I was under the impression that pluggd.in solely focused on domestic start ups or may be if you are trying to draw lessons then it’s different story altogether. may be web2.0 marathon is loosing it’s sheen in India. what do you think?

By: Beeba

Beeba — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 10:36:54 +0000

Four words: Under promise over perform – maybe nobody told them that?

By: Nishit

Nishit — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 10:03:15 +0000

It’s your fault when you launch yourself as “google killer”. Before you launch yourself, don’t YOU know that no matter how big index you have, you don’t have good enough searching, ranking algorithm that matches even say yahoo or live, forget Google. With your position, you’d rather start with stealth and then based on the feedback, you’d gain and then call yourself google killer. Higher the expectation, higher the burden and when you can’t lift the burden, you break your back and that’s the problem with cuil.