I like the sound of Cuil- all the goodness of their ex-employer without the digital footprint. Their privacy page reads:

Privacy is a hot topic these days, and we want you to feel totally comfortable using our service, so our privacy policy is very simple: when you search with Cuil, we do not collect any personally identifiable information, period. We have no idea who sends queries: not by name, not by IP address, and not by cookies (more on this later). Your search history is your business, not ours.

Right now though I’m waiting a long time for the first few of the 1,682,519,994 results promised on a search of this blog’s title to appear. The first time I tried it I got a rapid response – saying there were no results. But I’m optimistic that this could be my search engine of choice when things settle down. Their claim to examine the context of search queries in order to refine results is interesting and I wonder what it means in practice.

While a good tactic for a launch I don’t imagine the black homepage with centred box will last, not least when they quickly revert to convention for the results; but the results page layout of boxed up summaries is pleasant and readable – not unlike a good news site.

Now I’m waiting for page 2, and the features, privacy and management pages have all gone missing. I’ll come back tomorrow.