Google See Off Cuil Competition With Patent Acquisition

Web giant Google has struck a deal with the now-defunct search engine Cuil in order to acquire all of its remaining pending patent applications, say sources.

According to a report by SEO By The Sea, despite Google reaching an agreement with its ex competitor Cuil more than a year ago back on February 4th 2011, the details regarding the deal were not provided to the US Patent and Trademark Office until earlier this month.

However, the financial terms associated with the deal is yet to be revealed. The SEO By The Sea report also stated that the deal between the two companies was inked only after Cuil co-founder, Anna Patterson, had returned to Google in 2010.

The last of the seven remaining Cuil patent applications primarily deals with search interfaces for example, various types of dropdowns, query terms being displayed on multiple tabs, the ability to refine search results on the basis of related aspects as well as several other features.

Launched back in 2008, Cuil was initially aimed at offering Internet users a much better alternative to Google - a visionary that the founders Patterson and her husband, Tom Costello failed to effectively implement.