WebProNews

Anyone still holding his breath for Cuil to beat Google might want to cheat a little and start breathing through the nose.  The search company's product vice president, Louis Monier, has quit.

It's not an ideal thing when any exec leaves a company, of course.  The timing of this development - it comes less than two months after Cuil's disastrous launch - makes the situation worse.

 Louis Monier

Then there's what Michael Arrington reports: "Monier was recruited away from Google a year ago, where he was working on advanced search products.  Prior to Google he was the head of search at eBay and was the cofounder and CTO of AltaVista.  He is widely considered to be one of the founding fathers of Internet search according to search experts Danny Sullivan, John Battelle and others."

It should come as no surprise that no replacement has been named.  Monier intends to at least serve Cuil as a consultant, though, so things could be worse for the company.

One last, entirely irrelevant note: depending on his hairstyle, Monier looks a bit like either John Ratzenberger or "Survivor" winner Richard Hatch.