Wolfram Alpha as Important as Google
Wolfram Alpha – Scientist Stephen Wolfram has built a new engine, named Wolfram Alpha, scheduled to launch in May 09, that apparently can compute answers to factual questions and retrieving documents more powerfully than Google. A proprietary system based on fields of knowledge, containing terabytes of curated data and millions of lines of algorithms to represent real-world knowledge as we know it. Stephen Wolfram has shown it to search engine expert Nova Spivack in two hours demo on this new online service. See also Microsoft New Search Engine – Kumo.
Google simply retrieves documents based on keyword searches. Google does not understand the question or the answer, and does not compute answers based on models of various fields of human knowledge.
How Does Wolfram Alpha Work?
- The vision seems to be to create a system that can do for formal knowledge (all the formally definable systems, heuristics, algorithms, rules, methods, theorems, and facts in the world) what search engines have done for informal knowledge (all the text and documents in various forms of media).
- Wolfram alpha is an “answer engine” not a search a search engine. It’s not a “Google killer” – it’s something different, for a different purpose. It doesn’t compete with Google for document retrieval. That’s not the goal. It computes answers to factual questions. Some of the media really missed the point. Said Nova Spivack (search engine expert).
- Wolfram Alpha is like plugging into a vast electronic brain. It provides extremely impressive and thorough answers to a wide range of questions asked in many different ways, and it computes answers, it doesn’t merely look them up in a big database.
- Wolfram Alpha work by first understanding what you really want, then computing the answer, and then giving you links to documents that related to the answer. I believe it has the potential to be THE online service for computing factual answers. The system for factual knowlege on the Web. You ask it factual questions (such as “How many protons are in a hydrogen atom?”), and it computes answers for you.
Apparently, the service will offer an API, so other developers can build on Wolfram Alpha.
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June 13th, 2009 at 7:49 am
Wolfram Alpha is a good news in the area of search engines. It has some advantages compared to the other search engines. Still, it is not the competition to Google or other search engines, since it uses totally different approach. It is more like dictionary or encyclopedia than search engine.