Why Did Cuil Fail?
What could be done to have made it successful ?
That post pretty much nailed it for me. Asking for a hamburger and getting a raccoon? That's about how far off the mark their results were at the time.
Even back in the aughts, if you want to be successful in search, there has to be some angle in which your product is better than Google's.
Cuil wasn't.
For people to have heard of it would probably be a start.