Is This a Good Idea? A replacement for Google?

May 10, 2009

In ancient times, the Greeks sought guidance from the trancelike ravings of the ethylene-snorting priestess Pythia at Delphi. Today, we’ve become similarly enamored of the wisdom spewed forth by Google, the dominant search engine on the Web.

The human race now does about 235 million Google searches per day, in search of information on vital subjects ranging from Oprah Winfrey’s fried-chicken giveaway to the truth about bird-eating spiders. But just as the Greeks were dependent upon priest intercessors to translate Pythia’s streams of gibberish, so are we reliant upon our own ability to come up with search terms that suitably cajole Google’s all-powerful PageRank algorithm into summoning forth pages of links to Web sites where, hopefully, we’ll be able to find the information we are seeking.

But what if there were an easier, more direct way? What if we simply could ask the Web a question, and receive an answer?

Keep reading! There's more....

The ability to search in such a direct fashion would have far-reaching impacts. Instead of spending hours scanning all the pages coughed up by Google in search of the right tidbit, we’d be able to find out exactly what we want to know almost instantly. That would save enormous amounts of time, and dramatically boost the productivity of workers who depend upon information to do their jobs, in addition to freeing those of us obsessed with bird-eating spiders to actually accomplish something useful, like doing the dishes. 

But there might be a few drawbacks, too. If we could easily get an answer to any question from the Web, we probably would stop reading newspapers and books completely. We might even stop surfing the Web itself. That would deprive us of the intellectual serendipity that exposes us to new information and inspires meaningful insights, in addition to the latest “I can has cheezburger” jokes that we like to forward to our friends.

You’re probably picturing this new online oracle as something akin to HAL 9000, the intelligent, sentient — and malevolent —machine in 2001: A Space Odyssey. (Or if that’s too dated of a reference, try Karen Plankton, the  W.I.F.E (Wired Integrated Female Electroencephalograph) from Spongebob Squarepants.)
   

But I’m actually thinking of Wolfram Alpha, an online “computational knowledge engine” developed by scientist-inventor-author Stephen Wolfram. Basically, instead of searching for  Web content, as Google does, Wolfram Alpha performs computations to come up with an answer to your question.  In a blog posting, Wolfram notes:

Fifty years ago, when computers were young, people assumed that they’d quickly be able to handle all these kinds of things. And that one would be able to ask a computer any factual question, and have it compute the answer. But it didn’t work out that way. Computers have been able to do many remarkable and unexpected things. But not that.
I’d always thought, though, that eventually it should be possible. And a few years ago, I realized that I was finally in a position to try to do it.

Web entrepreneur-guru Nova Spivack, who has previewed how Wolfram Alpha works, explains how it works:

Wolfram Alpha is a system for computing the answers to questions. To accomplish this it uses built-in models of fields of knowledge, complete with data and algorithms, that represent real-world knowledge. For example, it contains formal models of much of what we know about science -- massive amounts of data about various physical laws and properties, as well as data about the physical world. Based on this you can ask it scientific questions and it can compute the answers for you. Even if it has not been programmed explicitly to answer each question you might ask it. But science is just one of the domains it knows about -- it also knows about technology, geography, weather, cooking, business, travel, people, music, and more.

An article from the Independent, a U.K. newspaper, further details Wolfram Alpha’s capabilities: 

Wolfram Alpha will not only give a straight answer to questions such as "how high is Mount Everest?", but it will also produce a neat page of related information – all properly sourced – such as geographical location and nearby towns, and other mountains, complete with graphs and charts. The real innovation, however, is in its ability to work things out "on the fly", according to its British inventor, Dr Stephen Wolfram. If you ask it to compare the height of Mount Everest to the length of the Golden Gate Bridge, it will tell you. Or ask what the weather was like in London on the day John F Kennedy was assassinated, it will cross-check and provide the answer. Ask it about D sharp major, it will play the scale. Type in "10 flips for four heads" and it will guess that you need to know the probability of coin-tossing. If you want to know when the next solar eclipse over Chicago is, or the exact current location of the International Space Station, it can work it out.

CNet News reports that Wolfram Alpha has some imperfections — it’ll tell you the box office gross of the first Star Trek movie, for example, but not where you can see the latest one. Nevertheless, its reviewers conclude, “It does things with online information that Google does not.” 

So what do you think? Is a computational knowledge engine such as Wolfram Alpha the wave of the future? Or are we better off sticking to Google? Express your opinion below.

Comments

[Stjepan]

Esteemed title, and friends!
allow me to greet you and ask you how you are. When health and love are good, then everything might be very good.
Esteemed, I'm in the Internet twelve years ago, when I needed a lot of informations, I looked for them in the GOOGLE search,as my kids attended their colleges and all ideas,notions looked through GOOGLE. Esteemed friends, GOOGLE is The Pacific, what's in connection with informations , and you Wolfram Alpha toward GOOGLE you're a small river I've never heard of. Be lucky till GOOGLE starts from you asking for the search services as well its ads motors.
Esteemsd, if you one day become 5% of GOOGLE greatness I'll pay you my year's membership not $50 but $500, just think on my words till GOOGLE reads this, before paying the services above mentioned.

Thanks, HI

[Astroboy]

huh?

[Caffeine Driven Stress Magnet]

This sounds like a big advance over Google. The question to me is whether it actually will work as described.

[Neo-Luddite]

What exactly does this thing do?

[Ron Carmichael]

This could change the course of civilization as we know it.

[Jared McManis]

i'm confused. Does this use information from the web, or not?

[Ben Bland]

A search engine which understands semantics has to be the replacement for Google. Something that understands what you're looking for, as a good librarian would, and suggests answers for you. This sounds like an exciting start.

At the same time, I think there'll still be a need for broader searching like Google's so you do the equivalent of asking the librarian to "give me all you've got".

[Shawn D.]

I personally think and feel that Google's mission has in fact come to an end, perhaps several years ago and no one has really bothered to retire the thing until now. Now that we have the means to make something better than Google ever was, why not use it? I think this is a right step in the right direction in the evulotion of humanity's life online.

[Natural Man]

Google is the devil.

[chonming]

AS chinese says ,web is water which can stand the boat,meanwhile,can swallow the boat!

[PistrisCa]

This is one of the best things I've heard happening to the internet in a while. But we all know that the cold hearted truth is that while we are comparing this method of retrieving information to the current Google powerhouse, Google is planning on buying out Alpha. So, when we say that this will one day replace Google, it's not intirely accurate.

[Philip K. Dickhead]

The real killer search app would be one that could find images and videos based on your description of what you were looking for.

[Great Googly Moogly]

Google glitch disrupts search engine, e-mail

May 14, 12:54 PM (ET)

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (AP) - Technical problems at Google are preventing an unknown number of people from using its Internet search engine, e-mail and other services.

In a Thursday post on its Web site, the Mountain View-based company reports that a "small subset of users" hasn't been able to get into their e-mail accounts. Without elaborating, Google says the e-mail trouble might be affecting other services as well.

Multiple messages posted on Twitter, a popular information-sharing forum, indicate that people all over the world are having trouble with the Google search engine and e-mail. But other Twitter users say their Google services have been running smoothly.

Google says the company is working to fix the problems.

[Larry Kovacs]

So would this program have information built into it that isn't available in Google?

[Patrick Kiger]

Wolfram Alpha runs into a few technical glitches, prior to launch this evening....

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/05/wolframalpha-launch-runs-into-a-small-snag-says-creator.html#

[Patrick Kiger]

It's live now...check it out and let us know what you think.
http://www.wolframalpha.com/index.html

[Astroboy]

I tried it and it was really disappointing, considering how much hype Wolfram Alpha has gotten.

[Barry Schier]

The advance hype really exceeds the reality.

[Caffeine Driven Stress Magnet]

I like the way you describe in this blog, but the reality isn't there yet.

[Neo-Luddite]

I'd rather have teleportation.

[Keith Hyland]

It would be great, if it actually works! The beta is very, very limited.

[Patrick Kiger]

Here's an article that's worth reading....

http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-can-wolframalpha-escape-the-curse-of-google-challengers-past/

[Daniel Jones]

ummm... this could shut down the internet. the internet consists of hubs. Google is one of them. if you shut down one hub and replace it with a dead end, then the web (or net) has a massive hole in it. this will, without question, severely damage the internet. and the internet is one of the quickest ways to transfer information, to communicate. this would affect your political & societal knowledge. not as much for the political but still, it wouldn't be good to make an alternative to google or any other search engines.

[Daniel Jones]

but I'm only 13, what do I know?