Wolfram
Alpha's no competition at all to
Google... Not even to MSN or
Yahoo at this point.
Who's afraid of
the big bad wolf... Wolfram
Alpha that is. After months and
months of hearing about the next
search technology that was going
to be yet another Google killer,
we are sad to report that
Wolfram Alpha is... a really
nice web calculator.
Several internet
experts have dubbed the search
engine a potential Google killer
over the last year and today, we
have some sad results to report.
To be completely
fair, the creator of Wolfram
Alpha British physicist Stephen
Wolfram has stated all along
that Wolfram would not compete
with Google at all, it appears
that instead of hyping this new
tool, the internets "experts"
might have done better to listen
to Mr. Wolfram in the first
place.
To test the
search engine it does not take
long at all to figure out its
limitations, it was created by a
mathematician and it is very
obviously a math tool. You can
ask math questions and will
often get very good answers.
However ask it a simple question
such as who is Leta Cordes and
it spits back a polite, but
useless page that says
Wolfram|Alpha
isn't sure what to do with your
input.
Google on the other hand will
give you 20,300 results with
result one being the home page
for the missing woman along with
news links. (Google's and
Yahoo's number one search term
today) Yahoo search
results are nearly identical.
Screen Shots:
Wolfram
 |
Google
 |
OK so we can live with this,
after all Wolfram is supposed to
be written by a mathematician.
This next two were just epic
fails and really will prevent me
from probably ever visiting
Wolfram again. I decided to go
with a math question, lets go
with one of the easiest
mathematical science related
questions that I learned in 5th
grade. What is the speed of
light? Wolfram's answer:
Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what
to do with your input.
Google on the other hand gives
me the answer in big bold
letters right at the top of the
screen followed by all sorts of
useful information. OK so this
is really a science question,
lets try a pure math problem.
You throw a coin multiple times.
What's the average amount of
throws required to obtain 2
heads in a row? That is the
exact phrase input in each
search engine, Wolfram gives me
the same unsure answer while
Google gives me 42,400 pages
with the answer on them.
A Google killer? Not even close.
Screen Shots:
Wolfram
 |
Google
 |
