It was only a matter of time. Cuil, the “massive” new search engine that was supposed to be able to keep up with Google, has just gotten its first knockoff. It’s Yuil, a Yahoo-powered mashup that looks almost exactly like Cuil. And, oddly enough, Yuil might actually work better than its much-hyped predecessor.
In a surprising (and hilarious) twist, Yuil is actually the product of Yahoo VP of Platforms, Sam Pullara, who is using the site to show off Yahoo’s recently-released BOSS API. BOSS is unique among search engine APIs, giving developers an unprecedented level of control over results generated by Yahoo’s search engine. And while Yuil isn’t really doing anything new with its search results, they’re more relevant than the occasionally bizarre ones we’ve been getting from Cuil.
Developers are only just starting to tap into the power afforded by the BOSS API - we’ll probably see dozens of similar search engines like this pop up over the next few months. The difference between these, and the generic API-based engines we’ve seen before, is that developers will be able to manipulate and reorder the results to make them more meaningful - something that APIs from most other search engines prohibit.
Update: Looks like someone in the Yahoo or Cuil camp doesn’t have a sense of humor. Pullara has just updated his blog to say he’s taken Yuil down:
“Yuil is dead. However, you can always get the same great search results here.”
This is hilarious. Does it actually work better?? http://www.readtheanswer.com/index.php?RTA=web2
Yuil no more.. people are saying..I guess it’s not working? http://blabtech.blogspot.com
SPAM.
I tried this and it works significantly better than Yuil. Anybody know how this Yuil engine was created???? Did you guys see the new live search interface???…. information here http://www.gothamtechminute.blogspot.com
it uses yahoo boss running on top of google app engine (python)
http://developer.yahoo.com/search/boss/
python library for boss
http://developer.yahoo.com/search/boss/mashup.html
blog article from a yahoo about boss
http://zooie.wordpress.com/200.....ider-view/
yuil is developed using yahoo boss over google app engine (gae)
since it’s gae, must be written in python
here’s the boss api in python:
http://developer.yahoo.com/search/boss/mashup.html
a link about yahoo boss
http://zooie.wordpress.com/200.....ider-view/
Obvious spammer is obvious
You tried Yuil and it works better than Yuil? Did you not even read this article which clearly spelled out how it was created? Take your spam links elsewhere.
“Searching enough web pages”
Time to b sued for ripping there design.
its a parody, can’t sue
They call still be sued… You only can’t be sued when you pay protection money to Bush.
thyme to be sewed four ripping there desines.
what do you mean ?
oh man it really is better! nice job sam.
a good example of yahoo boss.
Yuil only need 5 lines of code and zero funding…. compare that to 30 millions funding for cuil…. he he he
Yuil… clever. Where is Guil?
can’t do a guil. violates their terms. go yahoo boss!
How about GUIL.TY
good game.
Spit out my coffee
As alpha as Cuil is,it’s a million times better than Yuil.
This was thrown together in haste to get some free press.
Any developer can see that.
fyi - this is what is known as humor. chill.
it is interesting how a quick mashup is much better in quality and makes pro-cuil geeks get all defensive.
Clever Parody.. Sam will make good money out of his few days job from yahoo ads in Yuil. Y’all will go see it and it will show up in Digg too, right?
Yuil could be done correctly to clone Cuil, but this dude didn’t do it.
The predictive term javascript accordion menu is notably missing.
If Google had made Cuil they would have had artificial intelligence determine the categories in the accordion menu instead of the search results triggering a premade database of suggestions.
That’s what disappointed me the most with Cuil.
Somebody could use Yahoo BOSS and make a true predictive term accordion where the software determines the next tier of keyword suggestion based on data, not on premade human schemas.
That’s what Google would do.
I think a better name would have been druil — as in, I drooled on my shoe watching her walk by…
amazonshoppingcartrevelaed == massive geek
lighten-up dude.
Hilarious!
LOL! though the pictures are still inaccurate as ever…if you search for The Newsbreak Times (http://www.newsbreaktimes.com), you get a picture of a random city.
I disagree. It has surprisingly accurate pictures, especially in comparison to Cuil.
Searches I did:
twitturly
urltrends
google
yahoo
ebay
microsoft
All of these have valid images.
so funny, taking advantage of cuil media coverage
Anyone noticed that Cuil’s PageRank dropped from 5 (yesterday) to 4?
OMFG!!! –> http://www.newsbreaktimes.com/
Writing the world’s junkiest search engine: $33million
Writing a parody that actually works!: $3.30
Imagining the faces of the Cuil investors: priceless!
As you’d expect (given it uses Yahoo! results) this works way better than the original. The columnar results actually work ok when you have less crappy results and fewer dodgy pictures.
Nice one fella.
And, everyone still uses Google.
Cuil released too early, even for an alpha. They should have kept things quiet and opened up to a few people at a time. The hype is too great for anyone to deliver on, and then people turn cynical and move on.
Wow, the logo similarity makes me laugh…
Do we really need more? What we really need are awesome vertically integrated search engines like http://www.roost.com
Just bewáre a¢çentéd chàràctërs in the search…
Cuil is terrible. Lets move on.
This is just imitating UI part of cuil, not the results classification etc.
Cuil is still in infancy it will do better in future. I like the concept.
freakin hilarious. just goes to show how difficult building a relevancy model is. there’s a reason there’s only three search engines that matter. hopefully BOSS will help change that.
Very funny! Too good. The results are good.
What a publicity stunt…..
The results are good .. Cuil should buy Yuil ..
Cheers, Nag
Yuil is BOSS, which is Yahoo!… so Cuil won’t buy Yahoo!…aah? …I guess Cuil could use BOSS to power their search. It sure would help their ranking and relevance.
I can hardly keep up with this whirlwind of search changes. Search stops for nobody.
Don’t judge hard cuil. It’s still in his first days…
I believe in few months we can give a proper opinion
Yuil is pretty good. I did a search for my name and got some image that is not related as far as I can tell.
http://sampullara.appspot.com/.....+caballero
There’s should be a disclaimer/alpha notice… Use these results at your own risk.
Haha! Everything that I searched for using Cuil the other day, but didn’t even show up, just showed up in Yuil, and with the accurate picture and relevance. Good stuff
HAHAHAHHAAHA!! Awesome.
This is Exhibit A for anyone who wants to show that Yahoo! still has great talent. Not to mention search that works.
Looks like they had to shut it down… yuil is offline…. I guess that was it.. likely for legal reasons…
so the good yuil had to go, and the crappy cuil is still there….. there’s something wrong with that…
Haha, it is indeed down. I’d make another (more full) clone if I wasn’t busy.
HOW LAME IS THAT THEY TOOK YUIL OFFLINE….. come’on… guys…. get yuil.com domain name… put it up there… and leave it running….. why would he take it down???????????
Ok guys… everyone make a yuil, muil, suil, ruil, fuil, suil, guil,auil clone… as many as possible… everywhere….
News Flash!
Based on the phenomenal success of Yuil, Yahoo board recently decided to spin off Yuil. Next week, Yuil announces its plans to acquire Yahoo at $43.50/share. Ichan happy.
LOL… I think Yuil should be the preset search engine on Arrington’s pipe dream tablet internet machine….
that’s awesome!
sam,please put YUIL back up. I set it as my new HOME PAGE!!!
yahoo!, by the way, rocks!
it’s pulled down for legal reasons…
Shameless plug: http://bitcircle.com
I built this with Yahoo BOSS for $20 using Slicehost.
Muwahahahahaaha!
Thats a pretty neat site you got there. Good job.
Thanks!
I am hopefully going to have a new roll-soon with some new features.
I love this when you guys put quotes around massive when describing a service like cuil. Once you guys do something remotely “massive” such as provide over 120b results, please lower your falsely inflated view on online developments.
Relatively speaking (as well as financially), cuil is leaps and bounds more successful than Google. Imagine if cuil had the financial powerhouse that Google had. Perhaps then TechCrunch would bow down at it’s feet as well.
Yuil is now dead….
The really interesting experiment with this is what a difference the UI makes compared to the search results. Cuil tries to improve on both over Google which is a million times harder to do then just focusing on UI and experience. Yuil takes a capable search engine that’s close enough to Google’s results and gives it a new - admittedly stolen - approach in terms of user experience and people immediately seem to like it. It shows that there already is more technology available ten most of us can handle and in this world user experience improvements can make all the difference between runaway success and total failure.
well those cuil fans…its pretty simple. YOU GUYS BLEW IT OUT THE DOOR…. simple as that. You can roll out the next Jesus-Search-Engine… 95% won’t take a look at you anymore.
At the end yuil is better, why reinvent the wheel… u gotta be a hell of a lot better..to catch up with google…. and having worked there when things were already huge and big and rolling is just marketing…
Huge hype campaigns can backfire thats the problem, so how do we get yuil back?
Oh and talking marketing cuil… is just a bit a bit too close to the french word for ass… cul… even pronounced the same…
Ha - it’s nice for Yahoo to be laughing at somebody for a change….
yuil.com is still parking now.
Cuil is about the only one that Yahoo can laugh at these days. Kind of sad that their management team has the time on its hands to pick on start-ups but ceded the search market to Google because they can’t compete there.
they recieved a cease and desist to take down the site lol.
What.. CD already?