Inscrutable Design

I imagine you've heard of Cuil by now. Their Monday morning launch was a little rocky and they've taken a real beating for it in the press. Google's still turning up more relevant results, but Larry Page and Sergey Brin have set the bar pretty high. My search for "django python" on Cuil turns up a picture of a kitten - and that has to be worth something.

There are several things that the two search engines claim to do differently, but it's this piece from the About Cuil page that really grabs me:

We believe that analyzing the Web rather than our users is a more useful approach, so we don’t collect data about you and your habits, lest we are tempted to peek. With Cuil, your search history is always private.

Monetizing a web application is going to be difficult when you're not charging the end users for it. Joshua Porter covered this in an article titled Why Social Ads Don't Work. Turning traffic into revenue without betraying your users' trust can be tricky. It sounds like they've assembeled a talented staff, and I can't wait to see what they come up with.