Comments on: Wolfram Alpha: Impressive, But Not the Future of Search, Yet

By: WWD’s 2009 in Review, Part 1

WWD’s 2009 in Review, Part 1 — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:03:07 +0000

[...] went on sale, while I pointed to a report that blamed poor Wi-Fi performance on baby monitors. I reviewed new “computational knowledge engine” Wolfram Alpha, while Sam tried out Google Chrome and found it to be a speed demon. Tasks was integrated into [...]

By: SOMEWHAT FRANK

SOMEWHAT FRANK — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:29:08 +0000

Wolfram Alpha Co-Founder Theodore Gray Interview...

Last week I traveled to the Midwest to Champaign, Illinois to speak to a group of entrepreneurs about building brands and social media as covered by the Champaign News Gazzette and to host another TECH cocktail. The event was sponsored by Wolfram Resea...

By: Bookmarks week 21 | Bijgespijkerd

Bookmarks week 21 | Bijgespijkerd — Fri, 22 May 2009 13:17:20 +0000

[...] Wolfram Alpha: Impressive, But Not the Future of Search, Yet [...]

By: tdhurst

tdhurst — Thu, 21 May 2009 20:40:27 +0000

This is an exciting step forward for cloud computing. Very stoked to see what this means for future technology and collaboration.

By: Simon Mackie

Simon Mackie — Wed, 20 May 2009 06:14:53 +0000

@Dima I’m not sure that Google will be able to rush out something does exactly what WA does, unless the have had something in the works for a long time already. It’s not exactly a trivial system and look how long it took them to make GrandCentral into Google Voice…

By: Dima

Dima — Tue, 19 May 2009 15:58:33 +0000

First thing I looked at is the API and they have it.

This really an ultimate example of Web 3.0 and cloud services and it's something really new since Google. This is why some people say it's Google killer - of course it's not and of course I would expect same thing done by Google pretty quickly and that will be WA killer :)

By: Simon Mackie

Simon Mackie — Tue, 19 May 2009 11:31:40 +0000

@Yuri “at least not what we call search” – exactly right. With tools like Wolfram Alpha at our disposal, we’ll be able to do a lot more in the future. Will we still call it “search”? Probably. The definition will just have been widened to take in knowledge-based tools like Alpha, too.

By: Simon Mackie

Simon Mackie — Tue, 19 May 2009 06:54:06 +0000

@Charles - yes, that's a good point. It does present answers very authoritatively with no clue as to where the info came from. It would be good to have links back to the original source of the info (or at least a reference). I'm not sure how easy that will be for them to do, though. {EDIT} Actually, I take that back -- it has a "Source information"" link at the bottom with references.

By: Wolfram Alpha Facts | Wolfram Alpha Facts

Wolfram Alpha Facts | Wolfram Alpha Facts — Tue, 19 May 2009 01:23:35 +0000

[...] Wolfram Alpha: Impressive, But Not the Future of Search, Yet [...]

By: Charles Young

Charles Young — Mon, 18 May 2009 20:40:22 +0000

…however, there are other considerations. Once the initial excitement calms down, people will start to think a little more critically about the service. One obvious question is why should we trust the information WA provides when the provenance of the data is not clear? WA authoritatively states statistics, facts and figures. Some, obviously, are beyond question. Others are highly questionable. With Google or Wikipedia, at least you get some cues to suggest how trustworthy the data is – obviously a long way from being infallible but better than nothing. With WAA, all you get is a ‘Source’ link at the bottom of the page with a long shopping list of references. Early experimentation with WA shows that it does indeed provide some ‘facts’ which are simply not accurate. A recent Radio 4 (UK) programme discussed the often quoted statistic that the biggest cause of mortality for women between 19 and 44 is domestic violence – turned out that this stat (or variations of it), which has been quoted in official government policy docs, etc., originally substituted the word ‘mortality’ for ‘morbidity’ (ill-health), and is not really based on any actual statistical information at all, but is more of a guess. Will WA result in similar ‘true lies’?

By: Yuri Alkin

Yuri Alkin — Mon, 18 May 2009 18:41:59 +0000

Wolfram Alpha can’t and won’t be the future of search for simple reason: it is not a search engine, at least not what we’ve been calling a search engine. It may look and feel like one, yet it’s something different. In essence it’s a growing knowledge base with a solid set of search/analysis capabilities. And it become quite successful as such, it users start coming in with right expectations (and “Google killer” isn’t one of them).

Meanwhile it’s good at things you describe in the post as well in engaging in nearly philosophical dialogs, answering questions like “what are you?” and greeting you “Hello, human”:

http://connectionsblog.wordpress.com/2009/05/18/hello-human-a-dialog-with-wolfram-alpha/