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The Google Killer
Is "Googling" passé? A new search engine launching this month—developed in secret by a British mathematician—could radically change the way you surf the Web. The Daily Beast's Nicholas Ciarelli test drives it.
Step away from your Google search for a moment and consider the following scenario: What if a search engine, instead of giving you a long list of Web pages, simply computed the answer to whatever question you threw at it?
What was the average temperature in Chicago last year? What is the life expectancy of a male, age 40, in New Zealand? If you flip a coin 10 times, what is the probability that four of the flips will come up heads?
Wolfram Alpha easily computed a variety of facts: What nutrients are in two Snickers bars? How many people are alive today with the name "Nicholas"? How do oil exports in Iraq compare to those of Kuwait?
This scenario will become reality later this month with the highly anticipated launch of Wolfram Alpha, a free Web site that is the result of years of secret work by a British mathematician—Stephen Wolfram—and his team of 250 colleagues. The project set the tech world on fire last week after a sneak preview at Harvard Law School, and may present the most powerful challenge yet to the Google behemoth.
"The feeling that I had was that feeling from back in 1996, when the world was using AltaVista and this new thing out of Stanford came out called Google, and everyone said, 'you've got to check it out,'" says Matthew Prince, a business-school student who saw the demo. "I could immediately see ways in my daily life where I would potentially use this."
In essence, Wolfram Alpha is a frighteningly powerful calculator that is chock full of facts about the world. Type in a question in plain English: "What was the weather in Rancho Mirage when Gerald Ford died?" Wolfram Alpha instantly spits back the temperature, weather conditions, relative humidity, and wind speed, followed by a set of neatly formatted tables and charts.
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In testing by The Daily Beast, Wolfram Alpha easily computed a variety of facts: Which European country has the most Internet users? How many people are alive today with the name "Nicholas"? What is the height of the Empire State Building divided by the length of the Triborough Bridge? How do oil exports in Iraq compare to those of Kuwait? What are the monthly payments on a 20-year, 5% fixed-rate mortgage with a loan of $200,000? What is the body mass index of a person who is six feet tall and weighs 200 pounds? What nutrients are in two Snickers bars?
Many of these questions can be answered using Google, but only by visiting several different Web sites, assessing the validity of sources, and making your own calculations. Wolfram Alpha simply gives you the answer.
"Why should you, the human being, have to do the mathematical drudgework of doing this kind of computation?" says Doug Lenat, chief executive of Cycorp and a noted computer scientist.
It’s not the first time Google’s top brass have encountered Wolfram, 49, who was a physics Ph.D. at Caltech by age 20 and went on to create Mathematica, a wildly popularly software package that is de rigueur in college mathematics departments. Google co-founder Sergey Brin interned for Wolfram Research in the early 1990s.
The business plan for Wolfram Alpha is apparently still being written. The free site will display advertisements from corporate sponsors, while professionals will be able to pay for a heavy-duty version of the site. Beyond that, the details of how Wolfram Alpha will make money have yet to be determined.
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Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. Previously, he was a features writer at WWD and W Magazine. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post.
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Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
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Jeff Madrick is a contributor to the New York Review of Books and a former economics columnist for the New York Times. He is editor of Challenge Magazine, visiting professor of humanities at Cooper Union, and senior fellow at the New School's Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis. He is the author of Taking America, The End of Affluence (Random House) and The Case for Big Government.
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It looks like it will be a valuable tool, but no way it replaces old-fashioned Googling. When I do research, I rarely want just a fact answer to my question. More often, I'm looking for differing points of view and reasoning.
Old-fashioned
Googling.
That's a good one
Connie.
LOL @ Ritarita, and I'm old enough to know what old-fashioned actually means.
in technology, mac os 9 is old fashioned already.
Interesting.
Skeptical but will check it out.
"Wolfram Alpha simply gives you the answer."
So long as a user wants to also understand how the answwer is determined, Google will always have relevance. Nifty as the new search engine sounds, I don't know that it is a 100% replacement. Better would be one browser that the user could switch between modes.
Will it also validate that the answer is correct?
I not only want an answer to a question, but I like reading more on the subject.
I think there will be a place for this product, but it's not going to replace Google.
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Wow please tell me this is quantified sarcasm at its best and not some heart felt opinion you're having...please?
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they'd be comparable if wolfram supports user editing.
@Joe,
it's 10^100... wait, wrong googol...
A bit of caution/historical perspective is warranted here.I remember the early days of Mathematica - as a scientist I found it useful, but it never really lived up to the hype for a variety of reasons.To call it "wildly popular" is a stretch - for every college math student that uses Mathematica, a thousand blindly abuse SPSS on a daily basis.
Wolfram is a brilliant guy - read his writings (e.g. New Kind of Science) and you'll see that. But there is much debate as to whether in the end he is a crank or visionary - similar to Dean Kamen (of Segway fame) or Roger Penrose (Emperor's New Mind).
If history is any guide, Alpha will be a fun tool, but I wouldn't bet on it having mainstream influence.
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How generous of you to share your uh insights. It was also kind of you to read the article even though clearly you aren't interested in the kind of material this new search engine has to offer. But I think it is unfair for us to expect you to make such profound contributions on a regular basis. We really don't deserve it.
Interesting piece, but please rectify dek. It's *not* technically a search engine.
So what
Will the verb
Form be?
"wolfie"
I'm going to go with just the simple: "Wolf"
As in, "Hey, what is the molecular structure of methane?"
Response: "I dunno, wolf it."
" 'fram it"? no? oh, well.
This will supplement Google, but it is not a Google killer.
for someone googling simple things on the kitchen counter, simple is better, a la occam's razor. just as http://www.visualthesaurus.com/ is powerful but not central to my thinking.
it won't replace google for me. Do you know how many new sites and new information I see when I do a search? i love coming across sites that I wouldn't have otherwise known about.
Injecting the whole Google angle along with the
grim reaper imagery seems like a
nice attention grabbing sensational touch,
even though Google and Wolfram Alpha
seem to serve different purposes at this point,
so where's the threat . . . the " GOOGLE KILLER ? "
Who doesn't want to know how much
carbon they use when driving versus flying,
or the nutrients in two Snickers Bars?
Sorry . . . Most of us do NOT live in NERDVILLE.
Branching out to the "real world,"
where most of us live, would be a good idea.
Might want to rethink the name.
"Wolfram Alpha" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.
You know you're relevant when you become
a verb like "Googling."
Maybe we'll all be "Wolfing" or whatever, some day.
Sophia, I appreciate the reminder: nerd is out. Simple thinkers are in. I had forgotten that in the real world people don't want facts! They don't care about complex computations!
In the real world people want opinions and flash advertisements masked as legitimate reviews. Why would anyone want to know how many nutrients are in their food when they could google "snickers nutrient facts", click on the top result, and be faced with "Do You Know How To Lose Weight But Have A Hard Time Following Through? Join Peer Trainer!" No need to mention the flog in the side bar about how Jenny lost her 25 pounds.
It's funny just how high the level of anti-intellectualism is in so many of these comments (not just you Sophia). It's a cultural problem. And it seems that Wolfing is not going to reverse any trends on his own.
However, as "nerdy" as it may be. I like to think that my dad's generation would have fallen over themselves for a tool like this. And although it may never check the search market like google has. It may be able to capture a respectable niche of those of us who really don't care for the fuss and just want the facts.
Good article Mr. Ciarelli.
@ Worthwiggles4
Funny as this may sound, I actually agree with you.
I just thought the columnist was reaching for a sensational
caption, and the grim reaper image which has since been removed,
to try and tie the two sights together, to make something
out of nothing, because Google and Wolf do serve two completely
different purposes . . . for now, and Wolfing does serve a purpose,
but not the same as Google.
I wish this country had more "nerds," more intellectuals.
I admire people like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, and any engineer,
and we should all be concerned that our schools and students are
losing ground to China, India, etc., because we have become
a fat and happy country that cares more about Brittany Spears
shaving her head, than we care about NASA landing space crafts
on Mars. A mind boggling feat. The media doesn't even cover the Mars
landing.
We wouldn't even have this blog or internet if it wasn't for nerds.
Believe me, I don't take the genius-nerd-scientists for granted,
and I wish we paid more attention to their achievements.
Just seeing an airplane in the sky blows my mind . . . wondering
how the hell does something so heavy stay up in the air like that.
Most people take flight for granted, instead just bitching about
why their plane isn't on time.
We should all be grateful for the geniuses at Boeing, and any
"nerds" that makes our lives so much easier.
This new search engine sounds AWESOME!!
because all I want to EVER find on the Web are FACTOIDS!!
and it's not like Google offers any other features AT ALL!!
This article is CLEARLY and in NO WAY overhyping a search engine that no one will be using by lunch time the day after it launces.
I just want to know how do you know the service will provide the correct answer? Having work on systems implementations, you realized that systems can provide the wrong answer if the logic is wrong or not applicable to the question being asked. I think it will be a interesting start but to be a really good service, the sources that the answer was derived from need to be provided for independent validation and for reference.
I agree with the above, this is not a replacement to google (as noted by the author himself) and this was a total bait and switch on the beast's part.
This thing seems more like a wikipedia helper than google killer. If I search "Swine Flu" or rather "H1N1" will I get a definition or the current news on it? Which is more relevant to someone who would google that?
When's there going to be a piece about the next iPhone killer?
Wasn't that they way ASKJEEVES.com was supposed to work?
If you think Wolfram Alpha is dumb, then you are probably too dumb to use it effectively in the first place.
easy tuff guy
Does it make you feel good to be a snobbish asshole, Thenanyu?
Does it fill the emptyness inside?
Do you feel like a big man/woman/hermaphrodite to insult strangers on the internet?
This potentially could hit Google in terms of the private search market. A lot of companies are using proprietary Google hardware/software to manage their search functionality. If this can do what it says, I could see this being very useful to sites with a lot of dynamic content, like social networking sites.
But as a general search utility, I'm not often searching for simple answers when I use Google, I'm trying to look for multiple sources of information on the subject, which doesn't seem to be what this does.
Also, I agree that the name makes a huge difference. Now, if they were to call it Walfa, so that I could go walfalling (which I pronounce in my head as waffleing), it might be a bit better.
Great! Now all they need is a semi-attractive elitist blonde with a cackle to alienate the world with her wit and witicism.
Ha Ha :)
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There are two forms of information: text and data. We use word processor for text, and spread sheet for data. On the Internet, text side is booming, but data side is lacking. Many companies are working hard to change it. For example, Freebase is a data side equivalent to Wikipedia. Wolfram Alpha is a data side equivalent to search engine. These are two different worlds. Freebase would not replace Wikipedia. Data side search engine would not replace Google.
Oh, give me one small flipping break, Ciarelli, and whoever whipped up that grim reaper pic. We notice the Beast search is powered by Ask. Ashes of AskJeeves. First day Wolfram Alpha goes online let's enter "Are you kidding me or what?"
Why doesn't it ask itself how best to make money?
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The new search engine has some problems. Go to the website www.howmanyofme.com and you will see that correct number of people in the USA with the name NICHOLAS is actually 421,261. This is quite a bit different from the number you cited in your article. This really makes me wonder about the accuracy of this search engine. beware.
BEWARE?
Yes, Beware, lest you not know how many Nicholai there are. You could be WRONG about that and then the world would crumble.
Your website tallies the number of people in the USA with the name Nicholas. The question asked of the new search engine was, "How many people are ALIVE with the name Nicholas?"
I don't know if anyone has mentioned this to you, but there are people living outside of the U.S.
First of all the reporter clearly writes in his last sentence: "And the number of people named Nicholas in the U.S.? 775,933" Rogueink - Do you see the word "US?"
So either the search engine got it wrong - or the reporter got it wrong. Either way --> the fact presented in the last sentence is WRONG. And yes, therefore the readers need to be wary of this article. If one fact is wrong, than there is a high likelihood that other facts are wrong. Reader - BEWARE!
Second of all, are you concluding that in the whole rest of the world outside of the USA there are only roughly 355,000 people named Nicholas? Are you kidding me? That seems to be a very ignorant assumption and truly you had no business berating my comment. That was not very nice and it only shows how ignorant you are. The reporter got it wrong - or the search engine got it wrong - either case - Reader BEWARE.
Jesus Christ Wolfram is big bull shitter. Remember "A New Kind of Science?"
Thank you.
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