That's the thought a lot of people have. If you cut down on the number of pages, and you cut down on the linguistics... well, why then you can build Google! And it will be twice as good because you won't have all the spam, and you can spend time on important work, instead natural language processing!
But that's of course misguided. The strength of Google is the size of the index and the ability to compute meaning from words and credibility from the link graph. And once you get rid of those things, you're just another guy with a database and a neat UI. I mean, that's not such a bad place though, right? I get the feeling that Wolfram and the media are trying to imply that WA is somehow fundamentally different than Google. I think you'll find from both an output and input perspective, Google and WA are very similar. They both look at a huge set of data, provide a one-box interface, and spit out answers. And anyone who tells you Google doesn't do semantic data, or other kinds of info than web pages is smoking crack or running a PR game for WA. Google spits out images, shopping deals, geo-data, weather data, definitions, finance data, and the list goes on. And though most people don't know it, Google uses some social information as well (ever look at all the little buttons by a search result?). The only thing is, the social stuff isn't all that important, when compared to the other ways Google uses to differentiate data. Andrew Johnson Co-founder, TrailBehind.com On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 12:43 PM, P Kishor <[email protected]> wrote: > "Wolfram says that trillions of pieces of data were selected and > managed by a team of experts at Wolfram Research, and that these > experts also tweak the information to ensure that it can be read and > displayed by the system. He says the system has become proficient at > eliminating "linguistic fluff," or words that are unnecessary for the > location and computation of relevant data. This statement disappointed > Boris Katz of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who is head > of the Start natural language processing project. "I believe [Wolfram] > is misguided in treating language as a nuisance instead of trying to > understand the way it organizes concepts into structures that require > understanding and harnessing," Katz says." > > http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8026331.stm > > > Imagine that... trillions! Katz, by the way, is the creator of > start.csail.mit.edu that I linked to earlier. > > In other news, ZDNet reported that Strunk and White released a beta > version of their highly popular guide to arguably better writing and > Eric Raymond was seen sellling t-shirts hawking his "how to ask smart > questions that answer themselves," both, no doubt, fueled by the rush > of all these new Google-killers! > > Of course, my mom, who has still never used a computer in her life, is > happy she doesn’t have to deal with nuggets like GDP of France and > demography of Lexington. > > > -- > Puneet Kishor http://www.punkish.org/ > Carbon Model http://carbonmodel.org/ > Charter Member, Open Source Geospatial Foundation http://www.osgeo.org/ > Science Commons Fellow, Geospatial Data http://sciencecommons.org > Nelson Institute, UW-Madison http://www.nelson.wisc.edu/ > ----------------------------------------------------------------------- > collaborate, communicate, compete > ======================================================================= > > _______________________________________________ > Geowanking mailing list > [email protected] > http://geowanking.org/mailman/listinfo/geowanking_geowanking.org >
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