I'm wondering what other people's experiences have been like with Cuil (the new search engine created by a few ex-googlers). The first day I tried it I basically got a recurrent "our server is too busy" message, though I do like the minimalistic black home page. Today I actually managed to get some results. Having cuiled* "shanathalas", a name that so far only seems to be proprietry to me, I ended up with much different results than when I google that word. Google generally top rates this blog, and references to it, followed by a lot of my flickr pages. However cuil's top listings for "shanathalas" bring up references to my flickr photos, but not on flickr, but rather flickriver, a new flickr app. It shows no reference to my blog, but notes my existance on the blogrolls of metalmonkey and on other friend's blogs. So in other words, just random pulls, rather than any relevant listing.

Flickriver as an app is quite nice to look at, but then again, I think the same effect could be created by a dark background on the regular flickr site. I've been expecting a "make background black" button from the flickr folks for ages.

What do you think?

* I can't very well say "googled".