Is Cuil Cool?: New Search Engine from Ex-Google Employees Launches

A new search engine, Cuil (pronounced "Cool") has been developed and launched by some ex-Google engineers backed by $33 million in venture capital.

Cuil is claiming their index of websites is largest, three times larger than Google and ten times that of Microsoft's Live Search and that their engine methodology is based more on web page content and less on popularity (inbound links). 

Cuil is also promoting a greater level of privacy as they are stating they do not save search histories or surfing patterns, as Google does.

Here is an AP article on the launch of Cuil an article from WebProNews and a pretty detailed article by search engine expert extraordinaire Danny Sullivan on his site Search Engine Land.

Based on my brief test today my first reaction is similar to those of others I've read -- I'm not impressed at the results and it seems they are trying to work out the kinks as pages are taking a long time to load with many images not displaying.

What are your thoughts?  Is Cuil cool?  Do we need something better than Google?