I don't understand the reason for the viciousness in mocking Cuil. Sure, their search engine is bad but creating a search engine from scratch is hard. If your startup failed would you want the entire Net to be constantly mocking you?
Interesting article, but the fact that Peter Thiel didn't bet any money on it was disappointing. It could just be a case of the halo effect. There's just too many stories of "I predicted this too!". A broken clock is right 2 times per day.