I came accross a referrer over in mint a while ago from a search on a site from http://www.cuil.com/. I usually check out referrers (especially new search engines), and I was pleasantly surprised by this site in particular.
The site is amazing - the homepage has a really awesome live suggestion system and looks very sleek. The whole site design and interface is neither intrusive or old looking, and the search results themselves are displayed in a way that i've never seen from a search engine before. The whole site just feels right, and although I'm not familiar enough with it to use as a Google replacement this site proves that search engines can have great designs, and still be functional.
Unlike Google's list layout for results, cuil displays the results in a sleek grid layout, and lets you select whether you want a double or triple column view.
I think this type of search engine will eventually be the future, but while Google offers much more than plain searching they will always be a major contender to the new and slick search engines appearing all over the internet. While Google and other big search engines have the resources for bigger and faster, the modern style and less popular search engines have the capabilities to be slicker and more experimental with their features.
