There was an article in the recent much-talked about New Yorker that mentioned it was not unusual in the science community for a person to leave his or her academic post in order to go off and "think" for few years before returning with some sort of avant garde theory that somehow forwards the conversation. Possibly this is also true of former Google employees.

According to the NYT Anna Patterson is the latest "the latest in a long string of start-up companies that have been founded and financed with the goal of competing with Google." Patterson is a former Google employee who along with her husband and a number of other ex-Googlers is set to launch the search engine "Cuil" (pronounced "cool"), which she says will trump Google's. It should be noted that the last search engine Patterson created was bought by Google back in 2004 in an effort to upgrade their own. This time however, she is keeping the goods to herself. What's so cool about this one? Apparently its search index is three times the size of Google's (and yes, when searching size does matter). There's other stuff too, though Patterson's not sharing the details. However, if you happen to be one of those people who has taken time off to sit and "think" (for many of us this is also known as unemployment or in some cases, an office job) you can go and see for yourself, since as of today Cuil is currently up and running.