Cuil 'Crunches' Gmail, Shanghai Entrepreneur

New search engine Cuil seems to be off to a rocky start, associating some unrelated logos and photos with other content.

A search for Web site TechCrunch associates the news site with the logo for Google's Gmail Web-based e-mail service. A listing for "About TechCrunch" serves up a biography for one of the site's writers, but a photo that actually depicts Shanghai-based entrepreneur Sam Flemming of CIC Data, as noted by local site Shanghaiist. The biography is actually for writer Mark Hendrickson.

On a "Companies and Products on TechCrunch" page, the associated photo is for musician Tim Urban's album "Turning Home."

The actual pages do not portray any of the photos or logos associated with them in the Cuil search results.

"Being involved in the Internet and the Internet word of mouth industry, I know the power of being mentioned on Techcrunch. I just wish it had not been a random mention, but rather a genuine article about my company," Flemming said in an interview.

Cuil launched Monday as a rival to Google, the former employer of president Anna Patterson, who started the company with her husband, Tom Costello [cq]. The first day was also somewhat troublesome for Cuil, with some users unable to reach the index page or receiving error messages.

Cuil could not be reached immediately for comment on the errant results.