Web Search Upstarts

In our previous podcast we spoke of our disappointment that there is no significant competitor to Google's web-search engine. Contrast this with the situation in the late 90s when there was strong competition between search engines like Altavista, Lycos, Yahoo!, Ask Jeeves, HotBot, Northern Light, etc.

Recently, two new web-search engines have been launched, Wolfram's Alpha and Microsoft's Bing. Are they serious challengers to Google's dominance or will they follow other recently hyped upstarts like cuil into the dustbin of history?

Listen to the podcast here:



MP3 File

Wolfram|Alpha

Provided by Wolfram best known for their computational software Mathematica.

Introductory video from Wolfram.

Stephen Wolfram refers to it as a "computational knowledge engine" rather than a search engine.

It's built using Wolfram's Mathematica for performing calculations using reference data compiled from sources such as the CIA's World Fact Book and Wikipedia. As such, its "knowledge" is rather patchy and as a consequence a traditional search-engine, such as Google, is better at providing answers to the sorts of queries Alpha is meant for.

More:

• Google already has the ability to perform calculations and source reference material.
• Google has recently added the ability to search and compare (US) public data. Perhaps we can thank Alpha for spurring this sort of innovation.
• The article Another pretender to the throne is fairly critical of it, and so far our experience matches the author's comments.
  

Bing

Introductory video from Microsoft.

According to Microsoft, Bing is a "decision engine".

• It categorises search results (you can click a category to refine your search)
• It provides pop-up preview of each search result
• Other search features: Health, News, Shopping, Travel, Images, Video, Maps (some of these aren't available outside the US).
  

Bing has got a lot of good press (e.g. Beware Google), but still seems very U.S.-centric. Many of the features touted in the introductory video and "Why Bing?" page, e.g. shopping, travel and local, don't appear to be available to Australia.

The New York Post (tabloid) reports that Bing has so worried Google that "co-founder Sergey Brin is so rattled by the launch of Microsoft's rival search engine that he has assembled a team of top engineers to work on urgent upgrades to his Web service". Most likely a sensationalised report of reality but if nothing else at least Bing is spurring innovation.

Conclusion

Are Alpha & Bing good tools? Yes

Are they going to knock Google off its perch? Unlikely

What should you do? As always, judge for yourselves. Keep on eye on these tools as they will continue to evolve and improve with time, and will continue to provide healthy competition for Google.

Technology Flops

PC Authority recently published a thought-provoking article: Top-10 Disappointing Technologies in which commentators Iain Thompson and Shaun Nichols discuss their top-ranked information technology failures.

We'll discuss these, omitting a couple (with which we're unfamiliar) and adding one of our own:


MP3 File

• Virtual Reality: A technology that allows the user to interact with a computer simulation of a real or an imaginary world.
• Alternative search engines: Google is the 600lb gorilla of web-search. Where's the competition?
• Voice recognition (actually Speech recognition): The automatic conversion of spoken words into machine-readable input.
• FireWire: A technology for connecting peripherals to computers, similar to USB.
• Bluetooth: A wireless networking protocal for communicating over short distances - sometimes referred to as personal area networks.
• Zune: Microsoft's line of portable media players.
• OpenID: A standard that allows a user to log in to multiple services using a single digital identity.
• Windows Vista: Microsoft's current PC operating system.