Everyone knows Google, and everyone’s afraid of Google. Well, maybe not everyone. Apparently a few ex Google employees have decided to launch their own attack against the internet search giant. How? Well, seems they’re going to launch their own search engine to compete with their former employer. Sound impossible? Well, who better to do it than the people who helped the giant get to where it’s at in the first place.

Anna Paterson, who worked for Google and who sold the company her last search engine, is about to launch Cuil (pronounced ‘cool’), and it’s backed by $33 million smackers. Cuil’s search index spans 120 billion web pages, or what Patterson believs is 3x what Google can do. Of course, Google believes otherwise, but I guess only time will tell.

What’s different? Well, Cuil’s search results will be displayed a little differently, for one. Cuil’s results will show up on screen in a ‘magazine-like’ format spread across the page instead of vertically as a list, and it will have clickable sidebars that let you get deeper into the original search query. Others have tried to compete with Google in the past, some with some success. Included in these competitors are Teoma (think of Ask.com), Vivisimo, Snap, Mahalo and Powerset, owned by Microsoft Corp.