{"id":59,"date":"2009-05-17T18:16:05","date_gmt":"2009-05-17T17:16:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/luke.szkudlarek.pl\/blog\/2009\/05\/17\/wolframalpha-vs-google-comparison\/"},"modified":"2009-05-17T18:35:31","modified_gmt":"2009-05-17T17:35:31","slug":"wolframalpha-vs-google-comparison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/luke.szkudlarek.pl\/blog\/2009\/05\/17\/wolframalpha-vs-google-comparison\/","title":{"rendered":"Wolfram|Alpha vs. Google comparison"},"content":{"rendered":"

After reading Ericks’ article<\/a> and comments on how Google will crush Wolfram|Alpha I thought it would be good to summmarise the discussion as there seem to be a lot of confusion what Wolfram|Alpha is\/isn’t. <\/p>\n

See the differences in the table below and feel free to adda comment if you think I missed anything. <\/p>\n

At the same time I have to say I’m very excited about the Wolfram|Alpha project and I wish it had been available few years ago when I was still at the uni. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Title<\/th>\ngoogle logo<\/th>\nwolfram|alpha logo<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
Search Engine<\/td>\nYes – google is indexing the web and returning list of pages<\/td>\nNo – it generates output by doing computations from its own internal knowledge base<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Free<\/td>\nYes<\/td>\nYes, free for personal noncommercial use<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Audience<\/td>\nMainstream audience, thanks to its simplicity<\/td>\nEveryone, but given its complexity and it will attract mainly academic audience<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Link with information source<\/td>\nconnects users with information source<\/td>\nconnects users with information<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Database updates<\/td>\nreal-time dependent on the indexing frequency<\/td>\npotentially real-time subject to manual data input and approval<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Typical queries<\/td>\ngeneral interest, shopping<\/td>\nscientific, academic<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Business model<\/td>\nMainly Pay Per Click contextual ads<\/td>\nPaid subscriptions with enhanced features for large-scale and commercial use and business partnerships<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Fundations<\/td>\n1995: Based on a search engine called BackRub, BackRub operated on Stanford servers from 1995<\/td>\n1988: Wolfram|Alpha is built on the Wolfram Mathematica system, which has been in continual development since 1988<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Languages<\/td>\n41<\/td>\nEnglish only<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Limitations<\/td>\nauthority based on PageRank, lack of common data structure<\/td>\nWolfram|Alpha can only know things that are known, and are somehow public. It only deals with facts, not opinions<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Key strenghts<\/td>\nSimplicity and a wide range of knowledge\/data<\/td>\ncomputation and mathematics<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Data checks<\/td>\nMainly automated and managed by Google spam team. But, given its mainstream audience highly affected by spam<\/td>\nAutomated and manual, including exper review. Less likely to be targeted by spammers<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Data upload<\/td>\nNo – data needs to be published on the web<\/td>\nYes – submission process sumilar to wikipedia<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Private personal information<\/td>\nYes<\/td>\nNo. It contains only information that is considered public. <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Adult content<\/td>\nYes, particularly when SafeSearch Filtering is off<\/td>\nNo. It has no adult images or narrative. It gives only factual answers to factual questions.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

Conclusion<\/strong>
\nMany similarities but they are two completely different tools – targeting different audience.

\nI think Wolfram|Alpha has its right to exist as a niche and reliable tool for research and I’m sure there are businesses who will pay for additional features. What do you think?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After reading Ericks’ article and comments on how Google will crush Wolfram|Alpha I thought it would be good to summmarise the discussion as there seem to be a lot of confusion what Wolfram|Alpha is\/isn’t. See the differences in the table below and feel free to adda comment if you think I missed anything. At the […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/luke.szkudlarek.pl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/luke.szkudlarek.pl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/luke.szkudlarek.pl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/luke.szkudlarek.pl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/luke.szkudlarek.pl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/luke.szkudlarek.pl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/luke.szkudlarek.pl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/luke.szkudlarek.pl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/luke.szkudlarek.pl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}