Did you think anyone would try to take on Google search? I sure didn’t. Well it turns out a few former Google employees have exactly that sort of spunk. Their new search engine, Cuil.com, (pronounced “cool”) went live today. It claims to search more pages than Google (although Google probably disputes this). What is most interesting is the way in which it displays results. They’ve dropped the traditional “long list” paradigm for something a little more graphic and three column. It will be interesting to see if this gets any traction.

I did a few Cuil searches and the results were mixed. When I tried to search my wife’s business, eclecticpaperie.com, it gave me several accurate results along with a few others that were sort of … well … disturbing.

Regardless of whether Cuil becomes a “force” or not, I like the fact that people are coming up with different ways to display search results. The current method has been the same since the days of Compuserve and, in internet terms, that is positively Neanderthal.