Remember Cuil? The search engine startup that claimed it could beat Google launched back in 2008 to a lot of fanfare, but it just did not have the quality search results to back up its initial promise. Well, Cuil has existed for two years, getting almost no attention after its colossally bad launch, and now it appears to be shutting down.
There is no official word yet, but the site is down right now, and TechCrunch reports that former Cuil employees are saying it is gone for good. I could not reach anyone at the Cuil offices by phone to get a comment, but if it has failed, it is probably because the name is tough to spell and unintuitive to pronounce (every story about Cuil has to remind you that it is pronounced cool), and because it could not live up to its hyperbolic claims of outperforming Google.
