I love this. Love love love it. From TC:
The murmurs about new stealth search engine Cuill (pronounced “cool”), which were barely a whisper earlier this year, are gaining strength and are starting to reverberate through Silicon Valley gatherings…
…Cuill was also founded by highly respected search experts. Husband and wife team Tom Costello and Anna Patterson were joined by Russell Power. Patterson and Power are ex-Google search experts, and Google must be fuming that their inventions were not added to Google’s intellectual property library. Costello was the founder of Xift.
Cuill met with venture capitalists, but we’re hearing that Costello and Patterson eventually self-funded the company with a $5ish million injection of capital. They now have 10-15 employees and offices in Menlo Park.
Another rumor circulating is that Google already took a shot at acquiring the company with a very healthy offer, showing that they take this potential threat seriously.
This reminds me of another stealth search startup that Google quickly acquired: Applied Semantics. Ex Googlers who rejoined, much richer. Isn’t that why Sergey started that Founders Award?!
No matter what, it’s going to be hard for Google to keep its best folks, because the grass is always green where the horses aren’t. Er, or something.