Google killing search ap launches

It went viral in the blogging world within hours of its launch Monday. But will Cuil - a new search engine created by former top Google engineers – really be the “killer ap” that the alpha geeks are claiming? If Cuil (pronounced ‘cool’) can develop an ad platform to rival Google’s, it may just be David to Google’s giant.

But Cuil currently offers no ads on its pages. And the company claims it won’t monitor a user’s search habits in order to target advertising the way Google, Microsoft and Yahoo do. One of the biggest advantages Google has over its competitors is that it can provide better search results due to its massive advertising platform.

“Google is receiving so many searches per second and gathering incremental information from new [auction] bids and new advertisements that the search engine gets more relevant and powerful,” Scott Kessler, Standard & Poor’s Internet analyst said. “It’s self-perpetuating.”

Cuil, which has raised $33 million, may search out its niche in search. Then again, it could become an attractive acquisition for Microsoft, Yahoo or Google itself. Cuil stands out because of its three columns of search results and the fact it will scour the web more aggressively than the other big search engines. With the launch the site has been sporadically unavailable because of the high volume of searches. However, expect that to level out soon. After all, Cuil’s founders and architects include several former Google lead engineers.

Anna Patterson, chief architect of the company’s TeraGoogle search index is among the new company’s founders.

But the talent didn’t stop there. Cuil’s new team claims its search algorithm scans 120 billion web pages - three times the number that Google sifts through. The similarities don’t end there. Cuil’s spare start page is reminiscent of Google’s minimalist home page.

Google’s not running or commenting yet although Cuil’s launch did raise an eyebrow or two. A Google web search team’s blog post began, “We knew the web was big….We’ve known it for a long time.” But is the web big enough for another search engine giant?

Despite the buzz and the comparisons, it’s foolish to argue that Cuil will be the next big threat to Google.

“It’s a new kind of technology and platform that is going to unseat a company like Google - not a company that’s trying to beat them at their own game,” says Kessler.

Neither Yahoo (YHOO) nor Microsoft (MSFT) have been able to make a significant dent in Googles paid search business in spite of  spending billions to do so. That business accounted for 40% of all online search dollars in 2007, according to eMarketer.

How does Google do it? Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer admitted last week to investors that Google has such a huge advantage over other search engines because it delivers more relevant ads and has more advertisers in its system.

In June even Yahoo conceded that it can’t beat Google at its own game. Yahoo struck a deal to run Google’s superior search advertising technology on their web properties alongside Yahoo’s own search results.