Marketing Pilgrim

Proving that hype will only get you so far–without substance–Cuil is going from “Google killer” to “Google beggar.”
According to IBD, the start-up is turning to the search engine that it vowed to topple–asking Google to provide ads on Cuil’s pages.

“That is what we are going to do,” said Tom Costello, Cuil’s chief executive. “We are negotiating with the obvious people, Google and Yahoo, and we are going to decide which is going to be the better fit.”

I understand the need to make money. After all, at some point Cuil will burn through the $33 million funding it raised, but publicly admitting you’re going cap in hand to Google? Weren’t you supposed to have decapitated them and left them for dead by now?

To be fair, Cuil has stated that its strategy was to not place ads on its search results until such time as it had built enough traffic.

“We have had no ads until now because we are building traffic,” Costello said. “You don’t want to put up ads unless you have enough traffic.”

Smart move. Let’s see how that’s working out for ya:

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