This week started off with a Google threat, as a team of former Google engineers rolled out a new search engine that they described to be Google multiplied by three, capable of delivering more relevant results and a better way of searching the Internet.

Anna Paterson, Cuil founder and CEO, and former Google employee responsible for designing the company’s search index, together with her husband, Tom Costello, who researched and developed search engines at Stanford University and IBM, are now trying to beat the odds and start a search revolution.

Cuil is making a bold attempt against the absolute ruler of the search market worldwide, aiming for things that bigger companies, such as Yahoo or Microsoft, didn’t manage to achieve. However, the Cuil team is pretty confident that a new approach to the search system will make the difference.

How much of Google does Cuil incorporate? Not much, we must say, as Cuil offers a completely different alternative to the searching process, with organized and relevant results based on content analysis for each page, and promises not to favor the more popular sites.

But the question is: how willing is the Google user to give up his searching habits for the new Cuil? Considering that the ones promoting it are former Googlers themselves, perhaps some of them will give it a go (hopefully they didn’t try it on Monday, when the site was off-line for most of the day). But Cuil still seems to be lacking a lot of things.

Yes, Cuil offers pictures with search results, and wants to add even more media in the future, but does it have what it takes? Even Microsoft’s very own Steve Ballmer admitted during the company’s annual meeting for financial analysis that Google has one big advantages that helps it maintain its leader position: “they have more opportunity to serve up a relevant ad,” as they bring more advertisers to the system.

“Search is interesting, it's not content, it's not community, and it's not commerce, but search is an important part, it's sort of a killer app, if you will, for this new world,” said Ballmer. “It's a starting point to the world in which everything has moved to be digital.”

And search is not just about delivering text results, it’s also about the videos, the music, the news that all other search engines offer and Cuil seems to lack. Perhaps a beta would have been better, and maybe users’ feedback would have helped Cuil more with its goal. On the other hand, we can’t blame the Cuil team for feeling ready for the challenge.

There are still a lot of aspects Cuil still needs to be working on, and there are some improvements we should expect in the future. Cuil promises a lot of things, but it delivers only some of them right now, by comparison with Google.

We are unlikely to see any changes in the search market leadership anytime soon, but we can say that Cuil is doing a good job for now, leaving however a lot of room for improvement. Google undoubtedly remains the largest search engine available and it will continue to dominate the search market, with rivals such as Yahoo, Microsoft and now Cuil desperately trying to catch up.