MIT Algorithm Poised to Compete with Google
September 11, 2012
Can crowdsourcing kill Google? Folks keep trying. Now, OnlineMediaDaily tells us, “MIT Crowdsourcing Algorithm Competes with Google Search.” The MIT Sloan researchers, Professor Cynthia Rudin and her colleagues Benjamin Letham and Katherine Heller, have developed an algorithm that could give Google a run for its money. In fact, the technology is said to be similar to the recently discontinued Google Sets, for which some are seeking a replacement. This could be good timing for the academics.
Reporter Laurie Sullivan explains:
“MIT’s algorithm makes sense of posts from a variety of content across the Internet, based on the author’s expertise and Web site’s authority. It builds and reads many Web sites simultaneously, while pulling in information directly and indirectly related to the initial keyword. . . .
“The algorithm designs return queries instantly, with unrestricted access to a search engine, according to Rudin. ‘At the moment, Google prevents anyone from doing more than a few search queries a minute; but it is an artificial restriction that they can remove,’ she said.”
Interesting. Google may still have a leg up in one way, though, in its use of implicit social signals—those privacy-advocate-scaring calculations that glean a user’s age, gender, political leanings, and so forth. Rudin says such calculations could be added in, but her team has chosen to leave them out for now.
There’s no word when the rest of us will get to try out this new algorithm, but I would like to give it a shot. Best of luck to Rudin and her crew.
Cynthia Murrell, September 11, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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