Is Cuil a hoax?

http://www.cuil.com/
Certainly looks that way to me.
First clue: The claim that the word 'cuil' in Irish means knowledge is a red herring - or more precisely 'a trout of brownish colour' according to the Patrick S. Dineen dictionary. And brown trout is slang for...anyone? Two other meanings for 'cuil' from the same dictionary are 'a horse-fly, a gnat' and 'great eagerness'. The Irish language is baffling at the best of times!
With the fada the pronunciation is close to 'cool' but more precisely 'coo-ihl' - is this what they mean? It means 'a corner, nook'. Hence the goal area in ball games is referred to as 'an cuil', a goal keeper 'an cuil baire' (both 'u' and 'a' have a fada).
No definition of this word that I can find links it in any way to any meaning pertaining to knowledge. The only word I know in Irish for knowledge is 'eolas'. There are probably others but I doubt that 'cuil' with or without the fada is one of them.

I would be delighted if CEO Tom Costello or his missus Ms. Patterson could direct me to the source of his pet definition - and if it indeed it means what he says it does, I'll delete this post, humbly and happily.
Here are the relevant entries from the Dineen dictionary:

Second clue: Try doing a search. Lots of pages turn up in the search that do not exist, will not load. It does not find acetonestudio.com. Google turns up several pages at the top of the list for the same search. It's a disaster.

In terms of functionality and the 'user experience' it leaves an awful lot to be desired. This choice of three (default) or two columns for viewing the search results confuses the eye (and mind). The results vertical 'list' used by every other search engine seems to work just fine. Why change it?
Using Firefox it functions well enough, however using Safari it just does not work at all well.

The home page is...well...corny. That picture of the standing stones is just so ridiculous. If this guy is really Irish, I'm surprised by this bit of jiggery pokery. Arra shur begorra, whares the feckin' Leprehaun, mar ya?

It may well be that Cuil.com is exactly what it says it is and is at present inchoate but will in time grow to be a useful tool. Until then Google rules whether we like it or not.
They shouldn't have announced this thing it is wasn't ready. And it is not ready.

Having read more on this since I first posted I think it is worth making an additional note on pronunciation:
'cuil' (with the fada on the u) is pronounced something like coo-ihl. Not 'cool' or 'kewl'
This is such a crock of...er...um...gold? Brown gold? Brown trout all the way...and you know what that means...

Another point - cuil.com may (or may not) have the $$$ and servers and requisite technology to do as they profess that they can do - but as yet cannot and do not - but what they seem to lack most of all is intelligence and ability to deliver. Is it really intended to be a dumb search with no filtering at all? Somehow, whatever happens when you do a search it seems to do the opposite of what they claim. This is a really amateur effort...or maybe, in fact - I'm a dumbass who doesn't know how to look for something. Now where did I put my keys...?
well let's see what happens when the money dries up and the strawberries and cream have turned to white castle burgers...

If it turns out to be 'something' after all, I'll be happy to see them succeed and will eat a hat made of foie gras and caviar, served on a bed of endive and drizzled with the sweat of Nibelung. On my budget, that is as likely to happen as cuil.com lasting more than 6 months...to be bought by someone who just wants them to be the f#%k out of the way with their interfering, bungling, nonsensical algorhythms!

You read it here - just now...yeah...

So that's What Baidu is all about!

there is more behind this than reported here I'm sure.

A huge number of the ACEtone downloads in particular of the the ACEtone ALLstars tracks is through Baidu and SoSo spiders.
The top hits in acetonestudio.com webstats are from these Chinese companies. I'm actually pretty happy with this because it means that lots of people in China are hearing the music I produce. Of course I would like to be paid for it, but...it is good advertising...

Now the article does say this:

Baidu provides links only to music files stored on third-party servers. No music is stored on computers owned or controlled by Baidu.

Well, what's the problem? It doesn't say that they are hacking into any servers. Sounds to me like they are not doing anything wrong. Sounds even more like the major labels are trying to quash independent artists and make only major label music available globally, and at a price. It is my choice if I want to give this music away for free and Baidu and SoSo should be able to make it accessible as long as they are not breaking any laws. Baidu is a search engine. It is possible to find free downloads, free LEGAL downloads using this search engine. Can the record companies not understand that some things in life are free? What a jaded, cynical, stupid subspecies they are!

Here also is the Slashdot angle on the subject where some comments get it right, wrong or just ridiculously misinformed.

and for some clarification here is the Wikipedia.org entry on Baidu