Call me unambitious if you like but I would be happy to fail as Cuil has "failed". They still receive over 150K uniques per month. I would gladly take half of that.
Thanks to the massive mainstream publicity they received around launch time as being a "Google Killer" they were able to expose their site to millions (yes, millions) and lock in an audience.
Sure, the numbers have dropped off since then. So what?
I'm tired of hearing the word "fail" bandied about so self-righteously as if Cuil should be ashamed of not beating Google at their own game. Like that's some kind of minor challenge. Yes, their implementation is lacking. Yes they have not taken advantage of the time since launch to work out its weaknesses. But their PR department certainly can't be accused of failure and I wouldn't be surprised if they're making some decent ad revenue off that kind of traffic.
It would be more fair - to them and to us - to call them a mixed success. One of the problems of the word 'fail' used so liberally in these contexts is that it is a blanket refusal to look at the balance of someone's achievements in its context. Used this way, it's actually a bigoted term and has the very problematic side-effect of making us less willing to take a balanced perspective on our own achievements in addition to those of the people we label with it.
> Sure, the numbers have dropped off since then. So what?
I'm guessing the problem has something to do with the 33 million in VC they took.
> It would be more fair - to them and to us - to call them a mixed success
Perhaps you could if they don't take any money but they did, and now they have to figure out how to get that 5-10 times return on the 33 million they took.
That's the reason people consider Cuil to be a failure.
With 150K unique visitors a month, they'll be lucky to get back a 10th of that - in bankruptcy court. What I'd like to know is how this unfolds typically with VCs when they anticipate that they will not get their money back. Can they shut everything down right away and demand all remaining funds be returned on the spot or do they typically assume the loss, write it off on their books and let the company burn through its remaining cash and grind to a halt naturally? I'm assuming the latter.
Firstly, I think they are getting a lot more than 150k visitors a month. The Alexa numbers suggest more like 10x that.
That is not a lot of visitors. My one man static content site is getting about 200k (high value niche) visitors a month.
A search engine is likely to depend on ad revenues. It might be able to target its ads better and to get high click through rates, but also needs to serve a lot of low value searches so I cannot see how it can make enough to justify a valuation that is anywhere close to a positive return.
Fair point, but I assume they paid themselves a decent salary out of that 33 million. Plus they're incorporated so the worst they face is bankruptcy proceedings, which, again, will not have an impact on the individual members.
Perhaps we could talk about a failure on the part of the VCs that invested in them but even they have an excuse - they were supporting "the next Google".
The members of Cuil will come away with a significant high profile experience on their resumes and no doubt every member will have a story that will explain away the "failure" as someone else's fault. The members of Cuil have profited, learned and lost nothing - in other words, they are in an enviable position.
> The members of Cuil have profited, learned and lost nothing - in other words, they are in an enviable position.
Don't be so sure they haven't "lost nothing". The VC community is pretty small and large profile failures like this don't go unnoticed. I'd imagine that they'll have a lot harder of a time raising this much money ever again.
Perhaps that won't matter to them, but then again if they have designs on another company this could have a negative impact on how that plays out.
It's also too early to call it a failed investment and mere 'experience builder' for the staff.
What if Cuil still has a couple years of runway with that $33 million, or strategic investors who appreciate the 'option value' of a Google alternative? (I don't know that they have either, but they might.)
I'm sure more traffic would be nice -- if only to help train their ranking and snippet generators. And of course everyone likes their product to get positive reviews. But even without those things yet, their tech and operations may have made progress for a long-term assault on the giant search market
Indeed. People who were exposed to the site when they first opened may never come back. But, like the laundromat in my neighborhood, they could have a second "Grand Opening", only this time with better algorithms in place. It seems unlikely after dropping the ball as badly as they did, that they have the smarts to carry this out successfully. But it's still a possibility.
Maybe you mean "figuratively nothing" based on the standards you apply. 150K is certainly not "literally nothing" nor is it "called a failure" without consensus. I'm applying a different standard for 'fail' than you are. My standard comes from "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?":
A contenstant starts out strong and then "blows it" but still goes home with cash they didn't have when they started. Did they 'fail' or not?
Cuil had five million visitors during its first month and still has 150K, plus they have received $33 million from someone else's pocket. Even if they go under, the members will keep a nice slice of that for the ride home. The connections they have developed from such a high profile project position them well for their next endeavor. In addition, individual members are unlikely to be remembered as causing the 'failure' unless there is political backbiting among them after they leave (something that could well happen).
I'm sure pg would prefer people to think your way rather than mine. But I can't help feeling I wouldn't mind being in the position of Cuil's founders even if the hackers think I failed to slay the giant.
You have quite the positive outlook, I'll give you that much. But in my world taking $33 million is a big responsibility. The goal isn't to give yourself a nice salary and update your resume with an entry about the now-defunct search engine Cuil, it's to make your investors money.
Using your logic it would be almost impossible to fail. Sure they lost millions, solved no problems and wasted dozens of labor years, but some staffers got to network and get a new job out of it!
You forget opportunity cost. Apparently they have/had a high profile team. People who could've made more money elsewhere. Anyway, personal success or failure is never the same as corporate success or failure. Some of them might consider it a personal success and others may not.
I find it more interesting how intelligent people looking at their own search results could think this was enough to become a significant search engine. Maybe they just had to launch something knowing they were not ready.
Thanks to the massive mainstream publicity they received around launch time as being a "Google Killer" they were able to expose their site to millions (yes, millions) and lock in an audience.
Sure, the numbers have dropped off since then. So what?
I'm tired of hearing the word "fail" bandied about so self-righteously as if Cuil should be ashamed of not beating Google at their own game. Like that's some kind of minor challenge. Yes, their implementation is lacking. Yes they have not taken advantage of the time since launch to work out its weaknesses. But their PR department certainly can't be accused of failure and I wouldn't be surprised if they're making some decent ad revenue off that kind of traffic.
It would be more fair - to them and to us - to call them a mixed success. One of the problems of the word 'fail' used so liberally in these contexts is that it is a blanket refusal to look at the balance of someone's achievements in its context. Used this way, it's actually a bigoted term and has the very problematic side-effect of making us less willing to take a balanced perspective on our own achievements in addition to those of the people we label with it.