[petewarden]

> I am sure Cuil would disagree with this

That assumes that a later release of Cuil would have done any better. My assumption is that an even buggier release much earlier would have indicated that there was no market for what they were offering, and saved their investors $x million dollars.

Certainly whatever improvements they've done haven't moved the needle on their visitors: http://siteanalytics.compete.com/cuil.com/

If it was a case that the bugginess of the alpha put people off, you'd expect an initial spike, then a slump, then a rising slope as new visitors stuck with the improved post-alpha product. Instead it's just been a downward slope.