Fortune Watch

Since this morning the Internet has been abuzz about widespread trouble with Google.

Google Search and Google News performance slowed to a crawl, while an outage seemed to spread from Gmail to Google Maps and Google Reader. Comments about the failure were flying on Twitter, and quickly became one of the most searched terms on the popular micro-blogging site.

A Google spokesman said “We’re aware some users are having trouble accessing some Google services, and we are looking into it, and we’ll update everyone soon. Please let us know how Google services are working for you in your location and on your connection.”

UPDATE: The issues seem to be going away around 9:50 Pacific time.
UPDATE 2: 10:35 AM Pacific: Google says the problems are resolved and will give more details later. “The issue affecting some Google services has been resolved,” the spokeswoman writes. “We’re sorry for the inconvenience, and we’ll share more details soon.”

When the outage began, many users turned to Twitter to vent their frustrations and to look for information. Twitter users also were quick to begin reporting that the trouble was clearing up. “Google is back and I’ve stopped twitching,” said one Tweet.

This kind of outage is going to be tough on Google. When Google goes down, lots of stuff breaks. Not just Google’s own apps like GMail and Google Talk, but also applications like Firefox, which use Google as it’s default search provider.

All of Google, or at least the big pieces, went down and this is bad news for Google’s efforts to build up Apps, and to a lesser extent, Gmail, as critical business tools. It also undermines the entire category of hosted applications. If the mighty Google can stumble, then who can be trusted?”

The problem is not downtime- it’s lack of any way to mitigate the problems, and a complete and total lack of any customer service from Google. There is NOBODY you can call when there’s a problem.

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The site claims to scour far more of the Web than Google does. It promises to sift through more than 120 billion pages to arrive at the best results. Google no longer publicly offers up its breadth, though its silence there will only stir up the hype that Cuil is, in fact, the new Google.

Cuil is a search engine devised by a group of former Google employees. My initial impression of the site was that is was easy to use. It claims to have the largest database of indexed pages in the world, 121 billion – although Google won’t disclose the number of pages it has indexed. But how many pages a search engine has indexed may not mean that much. What matters is if it can find the one simple page a person is looking for.

So I did some tests of my own. I started with word “pirate”. Cuil’s top search result was a site called “Talk like a Pirate Day.” This site didn’t appear on the first page of Google’s results, although Google did find a wikipedia reference to it. Google’s top result was The Pirate Bay, a notorious file-sharing website. Pirate Bay was listed second in Cuil’s results. Beyond that, both sites offered, more or less, the same information.

But it was after the initial search that Cuil really began to shine. While Google offers some related searches, including pirate-related costumes, pictures and games, Cuil offered a much greater variety in alternative searches, including movies, games, software, sports, and even party suggestions.

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Search engine Cuil launched earlier this evening, claiming a bigger index size (120 billion web pages) than Google or any other search engine. The pedigree of the founders and execs, which includes three ex senior Googlers, means the service will be compared to Google from day one. And the way they will be compared is index size and, more importantly, relevance/ranking of results.

We’ve been testing the engine for the last hour. Based on our test queries Cuil is an excellent search engine, particularly since it is all of an hour old. But it doesn’t appear to have the depth of results that Google has, despite their claims. And the results are not nearly as relevant.

A search for Dog returns 280 million results on Cuil and 498 million on Google. Judging relevance of results is subjective, but Google returns Wikipedia as the first result, then dog.com. Cuil returns Dog.com, wikipedia isn’t listed on the first page of results. Both are meaningful results, but Google is better.

More searches, Cuil v. Google: Apple (83 m v. 571 million) – neither mention the fruit. France (102 m v. 1.5 billion) – Cuil’s category refinement makes their results better for this query. Stonehenge (800k v. 8.5 million). Silicon Valley (3.2 m v. 24 m). Techcrunch (600k v. 6.5 m).

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Billionaire investor Carl Icahn reportedly has decided to lead a mutiny against Yahoo Inc.’s board in an attempt to pressure the directors into reviving negotiations to sell Yahoo to Microsoft Corp.

To turn up the heat on Yahoo’s board, Icahn has lined up a slate of 10 directors to nominate as replacements, The Wall Street Journal reported on its Web site Wednesday, citing an unnamed person close to the matter.

Icahn hadn’t returned phone messages from The Associated Press as of late Wednesday. His intentions should become clear soon, however, because Yahoo has set a Thursday deadline for submitting candidates to oppose its board at the company’s July 3 annual meeting.

A representative of Sunnyvale-based Yahoo declined to comment.

Yahoo’s board is on the hot seat for rejecting Microsoft’s initial bid of $44.6 billion, or $31 per share, and taking measures that finally drove away the software maker.

Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer orally offered to raise the offer to $47.5 billion, or $33 per share, earlier this month. He withdrew the bid May 3 after Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, acting on behalf of the board, held out for $37 per share — a price that Yahoo’s stock hasn’t reached in more than two years.
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