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“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

by axod 17y ago

“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.” --Conrad Wolfram "look like a normal search engine" - translation 'it's like google' "Change the way people search online" - translation 'it's better than google'

pierrefar 17y ago
I read both those quotes as "different than Google". He's saying as it may look like Google but it's not really.
- axod 17y ago
  Come on, how can you say "it will change how people search online" and not expect to be compared with goog. That's just ridiculous.
  - pierrefar 17y ago
    People will by default compare to the old but that doesn't mean the new and old are the same! After a comparison, they may decide they are the same, or one is better/worse. The biggest problem for WA is that it is different enough that people used to the Google way of searching will not see its potential and powerful use cases. The difference is this: In Google, most queries end up with a list of links to pages that Google thinks answer the query. In WA, you get the answer. Of course Google has the "calculator" functionality, and that's the directly analogous product to WA. That's a Google killer feature: I query and get an answer directly without clicking around and hopefully, maybe, potentially finding an answer. Whether that's good or bad is a separate subject. Another more subtle difference: the query is interpreted differently by the search engines. WA's interpreter is much more powerful in deciding how to interpret the query; it also tells you how it interpreted your query. Google's queries are mostly keywords and phrases (and they've noted that the average number of words in queries is increasing), and fundamentally they're still interpreted as keywords as phrases not the meanings behind them. How queries are written (keywords vs natural language) and how they are interpreted is a big area of innovation in the search industry. I don't think they've finally solved it, but they're certainly trying hard: Hakia, Powerset, True Knowledge, and now Wolfram Alpha.

by axod 17y ago

pierrefar 17y ago

I read both those quotes as "different than Google". He's saying as it may look like Google but it's not really.

axod 17y ago
Come on, how can you say "it will change how people search online" and not expect to be compared with goog. That's just ridiculous.
- pierrefar 17y ago
  People will by default compare to the old but that doesn't mean the new and old are the same! After a comparison, they may decide they are the same, or one is better/worse. The biggest problem for WA is that it is different enough that people used to the Google way of searching will not see its potential and powerful use cases. The difference is this: In Google, most queries end up with a list of links to pages that Google thinks answer the query. In WA, you get the answer. Of course Google has the "calculator" functionality, and that's the directly analogous product to WA. That's a Google killer feature: I query and get an answer directly without clicking around and hopefully, maybe, potentially finding an answer. Whether that's good or bad is a separate subject. Another more subtle difference: the query is interpreted differently by the search engines. WA's interpreter is much more powerful in deciding how to interpret the query; it also tells you how it interpreted your query. Google's queries are mostly keywords and phrases (and they've noted that the average number of words in queries is increasing), and fundamentally they're still interpreted as keywords as phrases not the meanings behind them. How queries are written (keywords vs natural language) and how they are interpreted is a big area of innovation in the search industry. I don't think they've finally solved it, but they're certainly trying hard: Hakia, Powerset, True Knowledge, and now Wolfram Alpha.