Google vs Alpha: A Phantom Faceoff
May 6, 2009
Technology Review had an opportunity to put Google Public Data (not yet available) and Wolfram Alpha (not yet available) to the test. The expert crafting the queries and reporting the results of the phantom face off was David Talbot. You can read his multipart analysis here:
I found the screenshots interesting. The analysis, however, did not answer the questions that I had about the two services; for example:
- How will these services identify sources with “credibility” scores? I have heard that Google calculates these types of values, and I assume that Wolfram Alpha will want to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets as I try to do in this human written Web log
- What is the scope of the data sets in these two “demo” or trial systems? I know first hand how difficult it is to get some data in their current form for on the fly analyses. There are often quite a few data sets in the wild. The question is which ones are normalized and included and which ones are not? Small data sets can lead to interesting consequences for “the decider”.
- What is the freshness of the data; that is, how often are the indexes refreshed? Charts can be flashy but if the information is not fresh, the value can be affected.
Technology Review is trying to cover search and that’s good. Summarizing sample queries is interesting. Answering the questions that matter is much more difficult even for Technology Review.
Stephen Arnold, May 6, 2009
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4 Responses to “Google vs Alpha: A Phantom Faceoff”
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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.
I like Wolfram Alpha. It offers a completely new way of searching for information.
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