How Cool is Cuil?

Technology Company Offers New Look at Search

MENLO PARK, Calif.—Cuil, a technology company pioneering a new approach to search, unveils its innovative search offering, which combines the biggest Web index with content-based relevance methods, results organized by ideas, and complete user privacy. Cuil (www.Cuil.com) has indexed 120 billion Web pages, three times more than any other search engine.




Cuil (pronounced COOL) provides organized and relevant results based on Web page content analysis. The search engine goes beyond today’s search techniques of link analysis and traffic ranking to analyze the context of each page and the concepts behind each query. It then organizes similar search results into groups and sorts them by category.

Cuil gives users a richer display of results and offers organizing features, such as tabs to clarify subjects, images to identify topics and search refining suggestions to help guide users to the results they seek.

“The Web continues to grow at a fantastic rate and other search engines are unable to keep up with it,” said Tom Costello, CEO and co-founder of Cuil. “Our significant breakthroughs in search technology have enabled us to index much more of the Internet, placing nearly the entire Web at the fingertips of every user. In addition, Cuil presents searchers with content-based results, not just popular ones, providing different and more insightful answers that illustrate the vastness and the variety of the Web.”

Cuil’s technology was developed by a team with extensive history in search. The company is led by husband-and-wife team Tom Costello and Anna Patterson. Mr. Costello researched and developed search engines at Stanford University and IBM; Ms. Patterson is best known for her
work at Google, where she was the architect of the company’s large search index and led a Web page ranking team. They refused to accept the limitations of current search technology and dedicated themselves to building a more comprehensive search engine. Together with Russell Power, Anna’s former colleague from Google, they founded Cuil to give users the opportunity to explore the Internet more fully and discover its true potential.

“Since we met at Stanford, Tom and I have shared a vision of the ideal search engine,” said Anna Patterson, President and COO of Cuil. “Our team approaches search differently. By leveraging our expertise in search architecture and relevance methods, we’ve built a more efficient yet richer search engine from the ground up. The Internet has grown and we think it’s time search did too.”

Cuil’s methods guarantee online privacy for searchers. Since the search engine ranks pages based on content instead of number of clicks, personal data collection is unnecessary, so personal search history is always private.

Summary of Cuil’s features:

• Biggest Internet search engine—Cuil has indexed 120 billion Web pages, 3x more than any other search engine
  
• Organized results—Cuil’s magazine-style layout separates results by subject and allows further search by concept or category
  
• Different results—Unlike other search engines, Cuil ranks results by the content on each page, not its popularity
  
• Complete privacy protection—Cuil does not keep any personally identifiable information on users or their search histories
  

About Cuil

Cuil (pronounced COOL) is a search engine that combines the largest Web index with content-based relevance methods, organized results, and complete user privacy. The company’s next generation approach to search is the result of proprietary breakthroughs in search architecture and ranking algorithms. Cuil’s employees have extensive experience in search, having worked at Google, IBM, eBay, AltaVista, Stanford University, the Internet Archive and other technology companies and research centers. Cuil is located in Menlo Park, California and has received series A funding from Tugboat Ventures and Greylock Partners, and series B funding from Madrone Capital Partners. Cuil derives its name from an old Irish word for knowledge, reflecting the background of co-founder and CEO, Tom Costello, who hails from Drogheda, Ireland. For more information, please visit www.cuil.com.

Contacts

Vince Sollitto, Cuil
press@cuil.com

Andrea MacLean, Manning Selvage & Lee
andrea.maclean@mslpr.com
415-293-2798

Contacts



Vince Sollitto, Cuil
press@cuil.com

Andrea MacLean, Manning Selvage & Lee
andrea.maclean@mslpr.com

ExpoTV started it now it's happening on eBay

Things are really starting to move at eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY). You probably figured as much, considering that the company's namesake site helped move $14.3 billion in merchandise this past quarter. However, I'm talking about a different kind of motion -- motion pictures.

An entry in eBay's corporate blog last week indicated that the site is now encouraging sellers to link to videos that showcase their wares. Auctioneers can only go through five of the biggest video-sharing sites -- Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), Google's YouTube, News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) MySpace, Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) Soapbox, or AOL -- but it's an interesting strategy.

Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) isn't on the list. The search-engine giant has been a strategic partner with eBay for nearly a year now. Even if many of the clips available through Yahoo! are actually hosted on smaller third-party sites, it's a slap in the face to ignore a business partner that also runs one of the more popular video-sharing sites.

Still, it could be a revolutionary step for the site. The ability to see items in action -- assuming that the seller has the time to make a clip in the first place -- is far better than text descriptions and the occasional snapshot or two.

However, like any true revolution, this isn't a battle that can be won overnight.

Hitting the pause button
eBay thought this through. It contacted a few eBay members who were handy with camcorders, webcams, and video-editing software packages to showcase six different items on the site. OK, so maybe eBay fibbed as to how dedicated these aspiring filmmakers are to the eBay cause -- half of the listings are from sellers who have zero feedback.

However, you can follow the blog entry to check out the six listings. Some of them are pretty amusing, like the guy trying to sell his acoustic guitar in a highly unorthodox way. He strums along as he brushes his teeth on the guitar neck, makes out with the tuning keys, and even plays a few chords while he's on the toilet. Other ads feature stop-motion prowess in pitching a bike, Lego figures, and a 1996 Saturn.

The clips are slick, as expected. The members all chose to host their videos on YouTube, a good move since it may bring in auction-listing traffic through folks who stumble on the videos first.

But there's a rub, my friend. The six auctions have been running for nearly a week, set to end between today and Thursday. Despite eBay's promotion and the viral allure of some of the clips, the bidding battles just aren't taking place. Let's check into the six auctions, as of last night.

• The humiliated Martin acoustic guitar has just the opening $800 bid.
• The 1996 Saturn, star of its slick stop-action clip, hasn't received a single offer despite its reasonable $999 opening bid.
• A copy-room stapler with a compelling back story has been bid up to only $11.
• The vintage Lego figures have had enough activity to take the bidding up to $45, but the listing's reserve price has not been reached.
• A loaded Apple G4 is fetching just $84.50.
• A Surly Steamroller track bike has failed to nab its $300 start price, perhaps because the Brooklyn-housed bicycle must be picked up locally.

Thinking outside the screening room
Encouraging clips to promote eBay auctions may be a new strategy at eBay, but it isn't an original move. Intuitive YouTube users are already using video to direct traffic to their listings.

Val's Art Diary, the woman behind it is an oil painter who works her craft on canvas, documenting the artistic process with a camcorder along the way. She then auctions off the paintings on eBay. The promotional video diary clips are available through Apple's iTunes and her own website, but it was only after she was featured on YouTube that her cottage industry really took off.

The entrepreneurial spirit is starting to creep into the seemingly noncommercial YouTube site. Someone who was featured after demonstrating a self-stirring coffee mug quickly edited the video description to include a commissionable link to where the mug can be purchased.

Most people don't see YouTube that way. The legitimate video resumes aren't getting the kind of page views that the ridiculous, over-the-top ones are garnering. Clips of cars for sale will never draw in users the way fender-benders do. That's just human nature, but I still think that more and more people will begin tapping into the free multimedia promotion that is available through sites like YouTube.

What is getting in the way right now? A big factor may be a lack of education when it comes to shooting and editing videos. The learning curve isn't all that steep. A Windows-powered PC has the free Movie Maker editing application, and Apple users have access to even better editing software packages.

For investors, this trend will open up portfolio opportunities. Stocks like Logitech (Nasdaq: LOGI) and Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) that will thrive in a video-friendly future. Logitech is the webcam leader, while Adobe is the star of publishing software, as well as the company behind the Flash platform that the leading video-sharing sites use.

Will eBay buy ExpoTV?

Amazon profit doubles on 32% rise in sales

Shares jump in after-hours as results beat Wall Street's estimates

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) - Amazon.com Inc., the world's largest Internet retailer, late Tuesday reported that first-quarter profit more than doubled and sales jumped 32% as the Seattle-based company sold more goods through its Web site.

For the quarter ended March 31, Amazon (AMZN :

Amazon.com, Inc

News , chart , profile , more

Last: 44.75-0.02-0.04%
8:00pm 04/24/2007
Delayed quote data

AMZN44.75, -0.02, 0.0% ) reported a profit of $111 million, or 26 cents a share, compared to the $51 million or 12 cents a share a year ago.

Sales rose 32% to $3 billion, compared to the $2.28 billion from a year ago.

Wall Street was expecting earnings of 15 cents a share on sales of $2.92 billion, according to consensus estimates from Thomson Financial.

Shares of Amazon rose 12% in late trading to $50.05. The stock has risen about 20% since the company last reported quarterly results.

Amazon benefited mainly from a 5% surge in traffic to its retailing sites, which during its first quarter grew at a rate second only to eBay Inc.

EBAY33.76, +0.24, +0.7% ) in the electronic-commerce sector, according to an analysis from Bear Stearns.

More traffic translated into more purchases, according to Nielsen//NetRatings, which on Tuesday said the number of items purchased on Amazon jumped 12% from the same period last year, to 23.1 million from 20.6 million.

The results also got a boost by stronger sales of electronics, which jumped 48% to around $947 million, and increased to 31% of worldwide sales, compared to 28% a year ago.

Sales outside the United States jumped by 35% to $1.4 billion, while domestic sales grew 30% to $1.62 billion.

Amazon.com Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos said, in a statement, that the results were also boosted by growing traction for Amazon Prime, which is the company's first-subscription based feature that offers lower shipping rates, and easier checkout.

A jump in interest income also benefited Amazon's bottom line.

One of the most watch Amazon metric its margins, which is a measure of how much it profits from the sale of an item.

According to Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney, Amazon's operating margin for the quarter was 5.9%, which is "materially higher" that what Wall Street expected and the result of a more positive contribution from Amazon.com's international sales.

"This marked the first quarter of year-on-year margin expansion since the second quarter of 2004," Mahaney said, in a note to clients. He rates Amazon as a sell.

Goldman Sachs analyst Anthony Noto, also commenting about margins, called the results the "first clear positive for the shares." He rates Amazon shares as "neutral."

Amazon also tried to soothe investor concerns about Amazon's capital spending, which has helped to contribute to the company's relatively high margins.

In a conference call following the earnings release, Bezos said capital spending is sure to increase in 2007, as Amazon invests in new features such as its Unbox video store, but at a rate far less than last year.

"As we move forward, certainly still working very hard for further cost improvements," Bezos said, on the conference call.

The company also somewhat tightened its guidance for its second quarter, now projecting revenue in the range of $2.7 billion to $2.85 billion. The company previously had projected revenue in the range of $2.8 billion to $3 billion.

Analysts, meanwhile, had been expecting revenue of $2.69 billion for the second quarter.

The revenue forecast represents growing sales from its aggressive pricing and promotions, and tempered by a postal-rate increase to go into effect in May.

For the year, Amazon said it expects sales of $13.4 billion to $14 billion, representing an annual growth rate of between 25% and 31%. The range is slightly higher than the $13.37 billion predicted by analysts.

Amazon also increased its operating income projection for the year to between $463 million and $593 million. The operating income projection includes about $170 million in what Amazon describes as amortization of intangible assets.

The company said previously that operating income would come in be between $355 million and $505 million, or ranging from a decline of 9% to a gain of around 30% growth.

Amazon also said Tuesday that its board had approved a $500 million share buyback, which will take place over the next two years.

"The $500 million in buybacks should be an additional positive for the shares," said Goldman Sachs' Noto.

eBay Confirms Plans To Buy StubHub For $310 Million

Online auctioneer eBay Inc. plans to buy sports ticket reseller StubHub for around $310 million in cash, confirming an earlier report that the deal was imminent. The pending acquisition is expected to close before the end of March.

EBay wasn't saying Wednesday how the all-cash purchase will impact its financials. It will do so on Jan. 24, when it reports its fourth-quarter financials.

Aside from any potential benefit to eBay, the acquisition also serves as further validation of online ticket sellers, which have been among the fastest growing online industries.

StubHub generated about $100 million in sales in 2006 on $400 million gross ticket sales, according to spokesperson Sean Pate.

StubHub had been shopped around since October 2005, and eBay was considered by insiders as the leading candidate to buy the company. In a curious twist, eBay tried to buy StubHub for $20 million in 2002, when the company was two-years-old. But talks fell apart.

EBay has its own ticket marketplace as well. But it's unclear just how robust it is and what impact the StubHub purchase will have on it.

If traffic is any measurement, however, StubHub's business is far more active than eBay's.

StubHub saw 2.1 million unique visitors and generated 22.3 million page views in August, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. EBay's ticket section saw 309,000 unique visitors and 875,000 page views.

It's all about speed to buy, 'click to call' now available on eBay via Google

Overlapping services and partnerships apparently are part of Silicon Valley's effort to respond to tech-saavy shoppers who want service in a hurry.

In May, eBay announced a deal with the No. 2 Internet search engine, Yahoo Inc., to serve all its domestic advertising. Under a new partnership, Google would become the exclusive provider of text advertising on eBay outside the United States.

eBay plans to rely on Google's international presence to build a worldwide market for Skype, the Internet phone provider the company acquired last year.

The companies said they would use Skype and Google Talk, the search engine's instant messaging and voice-over-Internet telephone service, to build a search function that lets Web surfers launch Internet phone calls to eBay merchants or Google advertisers by clicking on ads.

Promoting "click-to-call" advertising was also part of the deal eBay announced with Yahoo in May.

Once "click-to-call" is established the next opportunity could be "Click-to-play video ads" for AdWords which appears to have had a slow start?