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:
From : http://www.washingtonpost.com/
