When you say you aim to compete with Google, you better have a product that can back that statement up. This has never been better illustrated than in the case of recently launched search engine Cuil (pronounced cool).

Despite a confusing interface, major relevance issues and some technical glitches, the buzz around Cuil is white hot - from airplay on public radio this morning to hundreds (if not thousands) of technology and Web search news blogs.

In my opinion, cuil is not remotely ready for primetime. But with an impressive management team (of ex-googlers), a massive index of 120 billion pages and a focus on providing Webmasters with information about their crawling habits, Cuil will continue to get its fair share of attention - let's just hope that eventually it lives up to the hype.