Cuil: Identity Crisis

There’s a lot of buzz about the launch of Cuil (pronounced "cool," ugh), a search engine by former Google folk. It’s attractive, but it does some strange things.

In a move of narcissistic predictability, I searched for my name in Cuil. I don’t know why I do that, because there are a number of people who share my name (which really has to do with the ubiquitous surname Nguyen). So, naturally, Cuil came up with hundreds of results, most of which were not me.

But what’s odd is the way it attributed the same photo to a handful of different Kevin Nguyens.

One of the first results is for a Kevin Nguyen who hosts a radio show on 90.1 FM The Sound. That’s definitely me, but that’s definitely not my photo.

I am way cuter.

On page two, there’s a Kevin Nguyen who swims at Cerritos College. Cuil uses the same picture, but when I click through to the site, it reveals an entirely different Kevin Nguyen.

The third page has a Vimeo user.

On the fourth page, the same photo links to a motorcycle enthusiasts group on Meetup.com (which cannot be found). This dude definitely cannot ride a motorcycle. Look at him again.

Page five features a doctor from Van Nuys, California. Six, a dude selling soybeans (broken). Seven, a poker player. Eight, spam. (My work on The Bygone Bureau doesn’t show up until page nine, but it’s the second result in Google.)

Aside from the fact that half the links I clicked through were broken, the photo of this one jerk has been prescribed to every single person on the internet with the name Kevin Nguyen. That's idiotic. There were also a disproprtionately high number of results from Meetup.com, Vimeo, and IMEEM.

I know hindsight is 20/20, but here’s the lesson to learn from Cuil: get your shit together before you launch. Or at least use my picture.