Is Wolfram Alpha better or just different?
By Michael W. Jones
Stephan Wolfram’s Alpha search engine is unlike anything that the search world has ever seen. Does that mean that it is better than Google or other “normal” searches, or just that it is different?
Wolfram’s new search engine has been primarily under wraps since it was announced a few months ago. Now some tech reporters have been allowed access to Alpha and some of their impressions have been recorded in a CNET article. It turns out that the answer to the better/different question is “maybe” to both, depending upon who you are and what you want to find.
First, Wolfram is apparently not for everyone. It is a serious research tool, especially for the technically inclined. It may well become the darling of scientists, researchers, analysts, and students while they are at work, but will probably not replace Google even for that group when they are at play. Alpha is an excellent tool for finding answers in objective areas, but the current version leaves much to be desired when looking for subjective answers.
It is also, in its current version, very picky indeed about the query that you build, and sometimes is not consistent even with very similar, but different queries. One seems to need a knack for doing successful searches using Wolfram Alpha. Wolfram himself has this knack, and gets wonderful results. For newer users, the results seem hit and miss. Either it takes a while to learn to use Alpha, or improvements are need in its search algorithms.
The big question on everyone’s mind seems to be whether or not Alpha is a replacement for Google. The consensus for now seems to be a solid “No.” As currently configured, it seems to be a niche product, even though the technical niche is a very large one. Some see Alpha as a way to correlate data from different sources to get new answers, while they see Google’s forte as finding conclusions that have already been reached. More people are after the latter kinds of answers than the former.
In the long run, while Wolfram Alpha may be a wonderful hard-fact tool for the professional researcher, in its current form it does not pose a threat to Google. Alpha would appear to be a tool for data innovators. The information that they build using Alpha today will be available on Google tomorrow.
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May 10th, 2009
The answer to the article title question is ‘different’, not better. It’s annoying that most of the Wolfram Alpha articles are trying to assign a simplistic, transitive property like ‘better than’, to a tool which they haven’t fully explored yet.
It’s also disappointing that one of the words which partly describes WAlpha, is hardly being used at all: Gift.
This tool will be a treasure to students, scientists, and researchers, yes. But it will also get people involved in science, who have the curiosity, who want to know more – but they don’t have the time or inclination to sit through years of irrelevant schooling, just to understand one aspect of some field of human knowledge. And it will help make such explorations enjoyable.
Specialty tool? Yes, but more. WAlpha will be put to uses which neither we, nor Stephen and his crew, have imagined yet. That much is already clear, and I can’t thank Stephen and his team enough, for expending their time and resources to create this.
Eagerly awaiting WAlpha’s debut.
October 27th, 2009
wolfa is just diff not better. it’s use will grow as time goes on and the site gets more popular tho. their contract with bing.com is gunna skyrocket it