My other option for the title of this post was 'Why Cuil Failed' but I didn't want to clutter the title with a phonetic explanation: Cuil = cool.  Or not.  

If you don't know what Cuil is, no worries, as they are now on a deathwatch.  There is, however, a lesson to be learned from their grand adventure.

They launched to much excitement that they were a better search than Google and even a "Google killer."  A big claim…and big story.  A true threat set to unseat the king of search and with the brains on board to do it.  The only problem?  It didn't work well enough.  It didn't measure up to the hype.

It is always important to sell a vision but you must have the ability to back it up to some degree.  There is plenty of time to sing the praises of how much better or innovative you are than the other guy once you actually have the customers and experience to prove it.

The backlash comes quickly and severely in a connected world especially since technology products and services are becoming more consumable leaving users to try them and form opinions outside the span of marketing's control.

Cuil peaked before it was able to deliver leaving any incremental improvement to be seen as correcting a problem versus delivering a new capability. 

Anyway, at this point it isn't really about better search.  Google didn't create search, they wrapped a business model around it.