5 ms·

Is it bad that I just don't get this?

by timcederman 17y ago

catch23 17y ago
I think it's one of google's answers to wolfram alpha
- TweedHeads 17y ago
  And Yahoo YQL
  - neilk 17y ago
    There is no relationship at all. YQL is just a way to query disparate Yahoo data sources with a relational-like language.
- Raphael 17y ago
  I don't see the similarity at all. Wolfram Alpha gives you detailed information about one thing. Google Squared gives you general info on a things in a category.
- wizard_2 17y ago
  This fits right in with Wolfram|Alpha. In order to produce all the amazing comparisons Wolfram|Alpha they had to turn databases, and the public web into structured data sets. What would make this much more then novel is if the collected data sets were made public or licensed for academic use. I'm hesitant to say commercial use because a) they can already do that and probably will, and b) it's the public assisting with collecting the data. One problem with Wolfram Alpha that a user submitted structured data will not solve is the ability to cite sources (or provide some reason to trust the sources). Wolfram Alpha has created a bunch of it's own datasets and academically you just have to "trust them".
mtpark 17y ago
I didn't either. Maybe I still don't. I think it takes a search and is smart enough to give you comparisons between results. Look at their examples to get a feel for how it works. I could be wrong, someone let me know if I'm completely off base.
- timcederman 17y ago
  I did check out the example searches. First one I clicked on - Hawaiian islands. http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=Hawaiian%20islands&suggest=8 http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=Hawaiian%20islands&#3... What does "color" refer to here? The island's flower? What colour is melemele? I should point out, I get what it does technically, but I'm just struggling to think of a repeatable user scenario where this would be useful... I also noticed a couple of weird things: 1) They're not URL encoding their example searches. Tsk. 2) Searching for "google squared" on regular Google brings up Techcrunch, and the Google Squared site is halfway down the list.
  - mtpark 17y ago
    Try example searches for "roller coaster" and "US presidents" . I think those are better examples to try and get a feel for what's going on.
- sgk284 17y ago
  Using heuristics, it attempts to form structure from unstructured data. It's a pretty good first attempt.
sp332 17y ago
Official description: http://www.google.com/support/faqs/bin/answer.py?answer=139211 http://www.google.com/support/faqs/bin/answer.py?answer=1392...
abossy 17y ago
Google is returning structured data. Google's specialty has been navigating through the seas of unstructured Web data that comprises the Web and making sense of it. Squared shows that they understand enough about this data to (semi-) automatically return it in a structured form. Structured data on this scale is considered a bit of a holy grail, especially from the POV of Semantic Web advocates. The cornerstone of the original Semantic Web vision was to have web developers manually annotate semantics into their HTML sites. Now they don't have to. The real value of Squared is the ability to query this data via an API. Arguably, Freebase already provides this capability, so the value of Squared is questionable, but presumably, Google is more automated and up-to-date or at a larger scale. I'm not sure -- maybe somebody more well-informed than I can comment.
- timcederman 17y ago
  Nice, thanks for the very useful dissemination.
baddox 17y ago
It works fine for products, but in that capacity it's just a slightly different layout for a Google Product search. (anyone else still think of that as "froogle"?)

Is it bad that I just don't get this?

catch23 17y ago

I think it's one of google's answers to wolfram alpha

TweedHeads 17y ago
And Yahoo YQL
- neilk 17y ago
  There is no relationship at all. YQL is just a way to query disparate Yahoo data sources with a relational-like language.
Raphael 17y ago
I don't see the similarity at all. Wolfram Alpha gives you detailed information about one thing. Google Squared gives you general info on a things in a category.
wizard_2 17y ago
This fits right in with Wolfram|Alpha. In order to produce all the amazing comparisons Wolfram|Alpha they had to turn databases, and the public web into structured data sets. What would make this much more then novel is if the collected data sets were made public or licensed for academic use. I'm hesitant to say commercial use because a) they can already do that and probably will, and b) it's the public assisting with collecting the data. One problem with Wolfram Alpha that a user submitted structured data will not solve is the ability to cite sources (or provide some reason to trust the sources). Wolfram Alpha has created a bunch of it's own datasets and academically you just have to "trust them".

mtpark 17y ago

I didn't either. Maybe I still don't. I think it takes a search and is smart enough to give you comparisons between results. Look at their examples to get a feel for how it works. I could be wrong, someone let me know if I'm completely off base.

timcederman 17y ago
I did check out the example searches. First one I clicked on - Hawaiian islands. http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=Hawaiian%20islands&suggest=8 http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=Hawaiian%20islands&#3... What does "color" refer to here? The island's flower? What colour is melemele? I should point out, I get what it does technically, but I'm just struggling to think of a repeatable user scenario where this would be useful... I also noticed a couple of weird things: 1) They're not URL encoding their example searches. Tsk. 2) Searching for "google squared" on regular Google brings up Techcrunch, and the Google Squared site is halfway down the list.
- mtpark 17y ago
  Try example searches for "roller coaster" and "US presidents" . I think those are better examples to try and get a feel for what's going on.
sgk284 17y ago
Using heuristics, it attempts to form structure from unstructured data. It's a pretty good first attempt.

sp332 17y ago

Official description: http://www.google.com/support/faqs/bin/answer.py?answer=139211 http://www.google.com/support/faqs/bin/answer.py?answer=1392...

abossy 17y ago

Google is returning structured data. Google's specialty has been navigating through the seas of unstructured Web data that comprises the Web and making sense of it. Squared shows that they understand enough about this data to (semi-) automatically return it in a structured form. Structured data on this scale is considered a bit of a holy grail, especially from the POV of Semantic Web advocates. The cornerstone of the original Semantic Web vision was to have web developers manually annotate semantics into their HTML sites. Now they don't have to. The real value of Squared is the ability to query this data via an API. Arguably, Freebase already provides this capability, so the value of Squared is questionable, but presumably, Google is more automated and up-to-date or at a larger scale. I'm not sure -- maybe somebody more well-informed than I can comment.

timcederman 17y ago
Nice, thanks for the very useful dissemination.

baddox 17y ago

It works fine for products, but in that capacity it's just a slightly different layout for a Google Product search. (anyone else still think of that as "froogle"?)