Insight, Analytics and the New Marketing
The next Google killer?
On Monday, British scientist Stephen Wolfram is probably going to go live with his Wolfram Alpha (or “Alphram”, as it’s called affectionately) – a giant electronic brain that has been touted as the next Google Killer. If you want to get a good understanding of how it works have a look at this webcast. Though was pretty impressed when I first saw this, it’s clear that Alphram is quite different from Google or any other search engine.
It doesn’t search the web –Rather than searching the entire web, Alphram sits on top of a huge database that has been combed over by scientists on Wolfram’s team. This database currently holds mainly academic data and facts. Wolfram claims that “probably 90% of the shelves in a reference library we can say we’ve got a reasonable start on”. According to some test users it is light on popular culture.
It’s computational knowledge engine, not a search engine – The system computes answer to questions such as “What is the average temperature in Chicago?” or “What is the average wage of a high school teacher”. It does this by mapping the questions to data components in the underlying database which are then combined to compute the answer. This is fundamentally different from how search engines work. If you ask them a question, they will retrieve answers that have already been formulated somewhere on the web by someone else. That, of course, already covers a lot of ground so it remains to be seen whether computing answers to new questions is actually going to be perceived as a real advantage by the users.
It returns more than just a list of answers – The display and organization fo the information is where the Alphram adds a lot more value than search engines. Search engines have put all their energy in becoming really good at finding information but in doing so, one could argue they have neglected the actual organization and display of the information they return.
It is in this area that Google has really been trying to spoil Alphram’s coming out party. As mentioned in a previous post, Google bought Gapminder but they haven’t really done anything with it other than create the Public Data feature they came out with recently. More promising is the beta version of Google Squared they will be launching later this month. It will return search data as a matrix. The video below shows a demo. The quality is pretty bad but you do get a good view on how it works.
One potential downside of Alphram is that it only likes “sensible” questions. In the official screencast mentioned above, every question gets answered properly. However, more objective reviews, like the one from CNET below, show that about 2/3rd of the searches did not return the appropriate results. This is because Alphram only seems to work well with structured questions, which suggests users will need to learn how to use the tool properly.
So Alphram is no replacement for Google. But it feels like a new and very exciting cross between Google and Wikipedia. And if people have the patience to learn how to use it, it may challenge search engines to become more innovative in the way they display search results. As for the launch on Monday, it’ll be hard to have one that is worst than Cuil’s!
I agree that this won’t see the end of Google or Wikipedia. However, given time it could be a very useful tool. There will be many things it can’t do, but those that it can, it should do with more speed and efficiency than the likes of Google and Wikipedia.
It already has an answer for the meaning of life…
http://www01.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=meaning+of+life%3F
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