I have been reading the posts on cuill which claims to index three times as large as Google's - searching for results across 120 billion web pages compared with Google's index of 40 billion pages but i find it ordinary , i have just done few test on for both search engines and i can say cuill needs lot of improvement in terms of UI and relevancy.

I agree with richrad that Having ex-Googlers at the helm and making big claims is nothing new. They were also coming out of stealth mode, which helped the PR. But perhaps what made the difference this time was that some key industry pundits made some big claims themselves about Cuil.

Danny Sullivan, who runs SearchEngineLand and is generally considered to be the most respected search blogger around, is quoted in the NYT as saying: "This is the most promising thing I've seen in a while". He did qualify that by saying: "Whether they are going to threaten Microsoft, much less Google, that's another story." And his own post on SEL goes deep into this very question - well worth reading.

Gmail has introduced a new privacy feature that will let users see how many computers their account is open on, and also allows them to sign-out remotely. Basic information is displayed as part of the page's standard footer, and users looking for more detailed information can view a log that displays the most recent IP addresses to access the account, along with the type of access (Mobile, POP, etc.)

The new feature will be especially useful for monitoring email accounts for privacy intrusions, as well as for users who like to use Gmail from public terminals and may forget to manually log-off. Google says that the feature is being rolled out as part of the latest version of Gmail, but it appears that not all accounts are active (I couldn't access it from my account).

The new Gmail features are the latest in a string of privacy-related announcements to come from the search giant. On Thursday we reported on a judge's mandate for Google to turn over all YouTube user records as part of the Viacom/YouTube lawsuit, which has been met with widespread outrage. Since then, Google seems intent on demonstrating its concern for privacy, having moved its privacy policy to its homepage (after months of opposing the change) and releasing the enhanced Gmail security.

A small software house LimitNone has filed a complaint in an Illinois circuit court alleging that Google at first began promoting the smaller firm's tool for migrating Microsoft Outlook customers to Gmail, then copied the idea and went into competition with it.

The lawsuit was brought by the commercial litigation firm of Kelley Drye & Warren LLP–by the same team who previously faced off with Google in a trademark case involving the Silicon Valley company's highly successful online advertising system.

Last December, the firm of less than five employees learned from Google that it planned to enter the market for LimitNone's migration product itself because the business opportunity promised to be huge, according to court papers.

Lead plaintiff's attorney David Rammelt said in a phone interview that LimitNone had been told by Google that 50 million subscribers was "just too big to come from someone else" and that a simple calculation of the lost revenue for LimitNone "very quickly gets you up to about $950 million.