3 ms·

Wolfram Alpha Isn't Google, So Stop Comparing Them

15 points by astrec 17y ago

ErrantX 17y ago
link w/o the splash advert: http://www.fastcompany.com/node/1282717/print http://www.fastcompany.com/node/1282717/print Anyway, I think this has been well hammered home by now - excpet the media are still plugging at the theme (as I keep saying I'm convinced that is Google's doing and very clever of them too :)) One thing that has occured to me is that we were wrong to compare it to Wikipedia too (which I spent weeks doing... :( oops). WA is certainly not in any state to compete with WP either, yet; when you consider the wealth of information available on WP. WA is really an academic and research tool: they have got some good hype from the "vs Google" and "vs Wikipedia" media coverage but I suspect that it will die off and wont last 6 months. It will have it's uses (if I were a student/academic/journalist etc. I imagine it would become as useful as Google and WP to me!) but.. well.. that's it... And how do they monetize it?
- stcredzero 17y ago
  except the media are still plugging at the theme So much of our mainstream-facing tech media are infuriatingly bad! What can we do about this? Maybe David Pogue should set people straight.
aaronsw 17y ago
Nor Wikipedia. If you need to compare Wolfram Alpha to something, compare it to Freebase.
jasonlbaptiste 17y ago
Amen. Here's my question from the spin/marketing/PR perspective: They got press because everyone loves talking about a Google killer. Freebase killer just doesn't get you the same type of hype. Was the hype created due to: a) Wolfram knew that people would talk more about a google killer and positioned it this way. b) The press mis-interpreted what the product did and wanted it to be a Google killer, even though it's NOT. c) A combination of both.
- axod 17y ago
  This quote from Conrad Wolfram was probably something to do with it IMHO “It does at first glance look like a normal search engine, but in fact we have 10,000 computer processors behind the scenes working out an exact answer. It will really change the way we get our knowledge, and we hope it will change the way people search online.”
roc 17y ago
They're certainly not the same. But when Google debuted, it wasn't the same as Yahoo either. And many of Yahoo's categories were superior to Google's early search results. Definitions aside: If Alpha works, it -will- impact how people use Google. If people change how they use Google, it -will- impact Google.
- gustavo_duarte 17y ago
  But only for a very small value of impact. What percentage of Google queries do you think might eventually become WA queries? I'd say easily < 1%. I see the two as very complementary, not really competing.

15 points by astrec 17y ago

link w/o the splash advert: http://www.fastcompany.com/node/1282717/print http://www.fastcompany.com/node/1282717/print Anyway, I think this has been well hammered home by now - excpet the media are still plugging at the theme (as I keep saying I'm convinced that is Google's doing and very clever of them too :)) One thing that has occured to me is that we were wrong to compare it to Wikipedia too (which I spent weeks doing... :( oops). WA is certainly not in any state to compete with WP either, yet; when you consider the wealth of information available on WP. WA is really an academic and research tool: they have got some good hype from the "vs Google" and "vs Wikipedia" media coverage but I suspect that it will die off and wont last 6 months. It will have it's uses (if I were a student/academic/journalist etc. I imagine it would become as useful as Google and WP to me!) but.. well.. that's it... And how do they monetize it?

stcredzero 17y ago
except the media are still plugging at the theme So much of our mainstream-facing tech media are infuriatingly bad! What can we do about this? Maybe David Pogue should set people straight.

aaronsw 17y ago

Nor Wikipedia. If you need to compare Wolfram Alpha to something, compare it to Freebase.

jasonlbaptiste 17y ago

Amen. Here's my question from the spin/marketing/PR perspective: They got press because everyone loves talking about a Google killer. Freebase killer just doesn't get you the same type of hype. Was the hype created due to: a) Wolfram knew that people would talk more about a google killer and positioned it this way. b) The press mis-interpreted what the product did and wanted it to be a Google killer, even though it's NOT. c) A combination of both.

axod 17y ago
This quote from Conrad Wolfram was probably something to do with it IMHO “It does at first glance look like a normal search engine, but in fact we have 10,000 computer processors behind the scenes working out an exact answer. It will really change the way we get our knowledge, and we hope it will change the way people search online.”

roc 17y ago

They're certainly not the same. But when Google debuted, it wasn't the same as Yahoo either. And many of Yahoo's categories were superior to Google's early search results. Definitions aside: If Alpha works, it -will- impact how people use Google. If people change how they use Google, it -will- impact Google.

gustavo_duarte 17y ago
But only for a very small value of impact. What percentage of Google queries do you think might eventually become WA queries? I'd say easily < 1%. I see the two as very complementary, not really competing.