> 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.
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.