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Comment by abstractwater | Hacker News Reader

150K uniques a month are literally nothing for a search engine. That's called failure.

Maybe you mean "figuratively nothing" based on the standards you apply. 150K is certainly not "literally nothing" nor is it "called a failure" without consensus. I'm applying a different standard for 'fail' than you are. My standard comes from "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?":

A contenstant starts out strong and then "blows it" but still goes home with cash they didn't have when they started. Did they 'fail' or not?

Cuil had five million visitors during its first month and still has 150K, plus they have received $33 million from someone else's pocket. Even if they go under, the members will keep a nice slice of that for the ride home. The connections they have developed from such a high profile project position them well for their next endeavor. In addition, individual members are unlikely to be remembered as causing the 'failure' unless there is political backbiting among them after they leave (something that could well happen).

I'm sure pg would prefer people to think your way rather than mine. But I can't help feeling I wouldn't mind being in the position of Cuil's founders even if the hackers think I failed to slay the giant.

You have quite the positive outlook, I'll give you that much. But in my world taking $33 million is a big responsibility. The goal isn't to give yourself a nice salary and update your resume with an entry about the now-defunct search engine Cuil, it's to make your investors money.

Using your logic it would be almost impossible to fail. Sure they lost millions, solved no problems and wasted dozens of labor years, but some staffers got to network and get a new job out of it!

Exactly. My goals are more modest than yours so it is harder for me to perceive failure.

You forget opportunity cost. Apparently they have/had a high profile team. People who could've made more money elsewhere. Anyway, personal success or failure is never the same as corporate success or failure. Some of them might consider it a personal success and others may not.

I find it more interesting how intelligent people looking at their own search results could think this was enough to become a significant search engine. Maybe they just had to launch something knowing they were not ready.

Given a timetable by their VC perhaps? Interesting. That would explain a lot.

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