Cuil is not cool.

I have been fascinated by the publicity that Cuil has managed to generate in its brief lifetime. It’s been a rough ride though with many of the reviews tending towards the negative. Though the strategy may have been to launch it and fix it as we go (the search for George W. Bush now works) the poor performance in the initial period will do long term damage to its reputation.

From a communications standpoint better management would have mitigated this damage, a public beta rather than a full on launch and a confident assertion that we are here to compete with Google may well have been a better strategy.

The site claimed 50 million searches in its first 24 hours. This goes to show that there is an appetite out there for an alternative to Google, Yahoo, Ask etc. This must be a positive for cuil, its management and its investors.

The question now is has the initial reaction done too much damage?