Un-Cuil, Man, Uncuil

There’s a new search engine pipsqueak in town, and its name is Cuil.  That’s right: Cuil, pronounced “cool,” which is apparently an ancient Irish word for “knowledge.”  Cuil is the latest in an undistinguished line of Google challengers.  It’s a search engine launched by former high-level Google employees, and it promises not only better searches but bigger searches because it claims to have created “the world’s biggest index” for trawling the Web.  This is not really a selling point for me, as all reports thus far seem to indicate that it gives users bigger but not better search results.  I, for one, rarely scroll past the first page of my Google search results.  To be fair, though, Cuil has one advantage that jumped out at me: its privacy policies trample those of Google for so many reasons, not least of which is the fact that it doesn’t keep logs of its users’ search activity.  I think that’s swell, and I applaud them for it.  However, regardless of how private or precise they make our searches, I can’t imagine Cuil is going to catch on, for one reason and one reason alone:

That name!  Seriously, did these folks even bother to consult a marketing firm, or did they just ask their hipster cousin?  “Cuil” is difficult to spell.  It isn’t catchy like “Google” (which is now a verb in its own right, according to the latest edition of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary).  It is a little too precious.  Worst (or maybe best) of all, it reminds me of cunnilingus, which I Googled for the correct spelling, because “Cuiling it” just seems like something my dad would’ve told my friends and I to do when we were making too much noise in the basement. 

Better luck next time, Cuil riders.

Tags: Bad Marketing Ideas, Cuiling It, Googling