Within hours of being launched Monday, Cuil - a new search engine created by former top Google engineers - was already being touted in the blogosphere as the next Google killer. But unless Cuil (pronounced ‘cool’) can develop an ad platform to rival Google’s, the startup will have a difficult time challenging the search giant.

The comparisons to Google (GOOG) were inevitable. Cuil was founded by several lead engineers from Google, including Anna Patterson, chief architect of the company’s TeraGoogle search index. Cuil also claims its search algorithm scans 120 billion web pages - three times the number that Google sifts through. And Cuil’s spare start page is reminiscent of Google’s minimalist home page.

The launch of Cuil certainly raised eyebrows at Google. Though the company would not comment on Cuil, Google’s web search team stuck it to the small search startup on Monday with a blog post that begins, “We knew the web was big….We’ve known it for a long time.”

Cuil representatives did not return phone calls.

Full story: fortune.cnn.com 

Labels: Cuil, employees, IndexTools, search