Technology blogs are abuzz with launch of Steven Wolfram‘s Wolfram Alpha search engine’s launch and rumors of Micro$oft launching a new search engine called Kumo. Not to mention a lot of people think Twitter will replace Google as a search engine like broadband replaced AOL Internet.
Search engines serve two purpose (yes, people often forget the other side unless they own a website).
- Letting their visitors know where they can find information relevant to their queries.
- Sending visitors to websites who might be interested in information or products on their websites.
Wolfram Alpha doesn’t serve the second purpose, unless you are Google, Wikipedia or one of the reference sites they quote. Imagine what would happen if Google started showing full resolution images to their visitors in Google image search. All the visitors (and hence revenue) would be retained by Google. There were already lawsuits about this and Google managed to scrap through by proving it comes under fair use.
Google is again under fire from newspaper website for ‘hosted news’, as a search engine it’s one of the major source of traffic for these news sites and if Google decides to serve the news themselves, traffic for news sites will take a major hit.
This is exactly what Wolfram Alpha is doing, they are providing all the relevant / calculated information right on their page and not sending the visitor anywhere. Are they plain evil or we need to redefine search engines?
Is Wolfram Alpha a search engine at all? I would compare it to Wikipedia and not with Google. It’s a source of information and not a search engine. Overall it may not be as bad a competition for information sites as wikipedia is.
My question to the readers: Have you really ‘used’ WA for finding some information / facts that you couldn’t find through normal search engines? I have wasted a lot of time playing with it and trying to find results for queries I thought it should respond to. It managed to respond to give an answer for ‘life universe and everything’ but failed to impress for ‘boing’ (as per boingboing blog).
My other question to readers of this blog, is it going to hurt people making money from their websites?
Jeet is learning about search engines and ways of making money online. He also owns directory submission service at GetLinksPro.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=eaa2be2c-a17d-4699-b61f-a84917f27f47)
{ 9 trackbacks }
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks Jet
I was seeing that weird name around and after do a few google searches I want to thank you for submitting a very interesting post
If you have used MatLab, you must know Wolfram, a search engine was kind of unexpected though.
Take it for a spin, it’s a fun tool. Looks like I will see you trying a couple of themes tonight.
Jeet´s last blog post..How to promote free directories?
thanks I was going to write a post about the reasons that I changed it.But the MAIN reason is that this blog is all about giving back and I missed having comment luv working.
Also I think less is more
Hey John…..Page Rank update was this morning around 1:15 am.
I got my PR 4 back…..after being demoted to “3″ for two months.
Hope the new theme helps get you back to PR 4 again too!
Hey I like the new theme……I’ve never heard of this Wolfram Alpha so it must not be very important in the overall web spectrum.
@Matt: Wolfram Alpha is rather new and still under development. But unlike ‘Cuil’ I was happy to see it didn’t die under load.
@John: This theme is not bad.
I mean I love Wolfram b/c it helps me with complex math and stuff.
It’s not really a search engine but an incredible tool.
TGLR´s last blog post..Hey Yo ‘Em, Where You Been?
It’s an interesting time waster, that’s for sure. It helped me find out I was born on the same day as Pete Wentz, remember that Ronald Reagan died on my birthday almost 5 years ago, and calculate that I am 3 years, 4 months, and 20 days older than my hubby.
Since I’m a numbers geek sometimes, I kind of like that I can do all the stuff on their page, instead of having to Goolge online calculators/conversion sites, and then find one that has the exact parameters I want.
Nice theme change too!
~ Kristi
Kikolani´s last blog post..Kikolani – The First Year
@Kristi: “interesting time waster” is a good way to describe it. That’s why as a search engine without external links it still harmless.
Did you try mathematical equations or company names etc.? They also have good results for domain names.
I don’t think it’s evil, and while I did a post comparing it to google I don’t think that it can be categorized as being the same type of search engine as the big G but it is one never the less, as it is used to search out information. As for it not providing the relevant information, you have to remember it’s only just been released and so one would assume that over time it’s resources will grow.
Sire´s last blog post..My Passionate Encounter. It’s Not All About Sex
@Sire wassupblog.com
thanks
It’s good to see some real bloggers in the house