Kagi Hitches Up with Wolfram

March 6, 2024

This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.

“Kagi + Wolfram” reports that the for-fee Web search engine with AI has hooked up with one of the pre-eminent mathy people innovating today. The write up includes PR about the upsides of Kagi search and Wolfram’s computational services. The article states:

…we have partnered with Wolfram|Alpha, a well-respected computational knowledge engine. By integrating Wolfram Alpha’s extensive knowledge base and robust algorithms into Kagi’s search platform, we aim to deliver more precise, reliable, and comprehensive search results to our users. This partnership represents a significant step forward in our goal to provide a search engine that users can trust to find the dependable information they need quickly and easily. In addition, we are very pleased to welcome Stephen Wolfram to Kagi’s board of advisors.

The basic wagon gets a rethink with other animals given a chance to make progress. Thanks, MSFT Copilot. Good enough, but in truth I gave up trying to get a similar image with the dog replaced by a mathematician and the pig replaced with a perky entrepreneur.

The integration of mathiness with smart search is a step forward, certainly more impressive than other firms’ recycling of Web content into bubble gum cards presenting answer. Kagi is taking steps — small, methodical ones — toward what I have described as “search enabled applications” and my friend Dr. Greg Grefenstette described in his book with the snappy title “Search-Based Applications: At the Confluence of Search and Database Technologies (Synthesis Lectures on Information Concepts, Retrieval, and Services, 17).”

It may seem like a big step from putting mathiness in a Web search engine to creating a platform for search enabled applications. It may be, but I like to think that some bright young sprouts will figure out that linking a mostly brain dead legacy app with a Kagi-Wolfram service might be useful in a number of disciplines. Even some super confident really brilliantly wonderful Googlers might find the service useful.

Net net: I am gratified that Kagi’s for-fee Web search is evolving. Google’s apparent ineptitude might give Kagi the chance Neeva never had.

Stephen E Arnold, March 6, 2024

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Business strategy, News, Search, Search enabled applications

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.