It was only a matter of time. Cuil, the “massive” new search engine that was supposed to be able to keep up with Google, has just gotten its first knockoff. It’s Yuil, a Yahoo-powered mashup that looks almost exactly like Cuil. And, oddly enough, Yuil might actually work better than its much-hyped predecessor.
In a surprising (and hilarious) twist, Yuil is actually the product of Yahoo VP of Platforms, Sam Pullara, who is using the site to show off Yahoo’s recently-released BOSS API. BOSS is unique among search engine APIs, giving developers an unprecedented level of control over results generated by Yahoo’s search engine. And while Yuil isn’t really doing anything new with its search results, they’re more relevant than the occasionally bizarre ones we’ve been getting from Cuil.
Developers are only just starting to tap into the power afforded by the BOSS API – we’ll probably see dozens of similar search engines like this pop up over the next few months. The difference between these, and the generic API-based engines we’ve seen before, is that developers will be able to manipulate and reorder the results to make them more meaningful – something that APIs from most other search engines prohibit.
Update: Looks like someone in the Yahoo or Cuil camp doesn’t have a sense of humor. Pullara has just updated his blog to say he’s taken Yuil down:
“Yuil is dead. However, you can always get the same great search results here.”
