First, some basic details:
Google Squared is the latest product to come out of the Google labs and the supposed answer to Wolfram Alpha. It’s a spin-off from Google’s core search engine and apparently aims to take the masses of unstructured data and return search results that are neatly organised for you, the user.
Whether there it does any of that, we’re about to find out.
What’s it good for?
First tests seem to show results returned in database format and frankly, some distance away from what our initial thoughts of Wolfram Alpha were. Google Squared initially seems perfect for ‘list’ based research, when you’re after already organised content rather than having to compile it yourself.
How to use it
Start off by naming a bunch of things; planets, birds, basketball players, for example. If there isn’t an existing table of data, Google will (hopefully) give you a few idea for column titles or give you the opportunity to enter custom titles.
Google will attempt to collate the data for each individual cell themselves but will obviously occasionally get it wrong and you’re there to correct them.
What’s really phenomenal is how easy Google have made it to add further information to the resulting database. Using planets as an example, you are given a default set of columns but are able to add additional columns such as “Date of Discovery” and Google will automatically insert the found data in the specified column.
Amusing mistakes
Google Squared is certainly not perfect and it makes some amusing mistakes. As reader PanMan has already noted in the comments to this post, entering ‘Amsterdam‘ currently gives a puzzling table of information about buildings in the city that confuses Amsterdam Arena with a piece of simulation software called ‘Arena’ by American company Rockwell Automation. The ‘Price’ column in the Square is particularly nonsensical. The ‘price’ of the Anne Frank House is actually the price of a print of the it while the ‘price’ of the Van Gogh Museum is actually the price of a book about the artist.
The data will undoubtedly become better, and mistakes will be fewer, as the human touch improves it.
As a first draft of Google’s approach to semantic search this is spectacular.
H/T Atul.
So, will I buy the Arena or the Stedelijk Museum?
http://skitch.com/panman/b12y4/amsterdam-google-squared
LOL
Request: Google
Row: Google Health
Column: Employees
Result: I’m Afraid I Can’t Let You Do That Dave
It’s awful! The description it gives for a young college student named Kristen Patty is: A patty is a disc-shaped, (round) serving of meat or meat substitutes. It at least let me know she was Roman Catholic. Not an Alpha Killer but luckily Alpha’s even worse and will wither to a Google Page Rank of 1 within 6 months.
Mark
It’s cool and usefull but not a killer of anything.
I agree with some of the comments, not a Alpha killer, but it’s in the path of constructing a very nice competitor.
I love it. You can put a term together and new columns and design your preferred results.
I guess this feature will play its role in Google Wave as well.
I agree with @Bryan as well… a search for: d/dx(e^x) on both don’t even compare. They’re not the same tool.
And, just because it astounds me: try this in Wolfram, then click “Show steps:”
d/dx(e^x*sin(cos(3x^3-19x^2+12x-3))/arctan(x^4-64))
Google seems to think I’m family to both Lex Luthor and Adolf H. (Hell of a family party…)
http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=Family
It seems to me that Mars is missing in the list of planets…WolframAlpha blows Google Squared out of the water on “planets”
This is not at all the same thing as WolframAlpha. It’s just another way of displaying google results. Not a way of calculating and compare data (like wolfram). Searched for “gdp sweden” on google square and got a phone number to somebody in Stockholm. When searching for it on WolframAlpha I get a nice graph showing gdp in sweden from 1952 to 2007.
Thats cool!
I really don’t understand the Wolfram Alpha killer tag line — unless you’re just trying to get a link to your blog at the top of Google and are going after a new web application so you can establish priority in the web timeline.
Wolfram Alpha comes with a repository of information and can calculate based on what it has stored. As far as I can tell, WA doesn’t have a page rank for its tables and charts and census information, etc.
It comes out of the box with facts.
Google Squared seems like it’s organizing what’s on the web and then, Tom Sawyer like, wants you to do the organizing for it because it doesn’t have a lot of information organized yet.
Google Squared appears to be similar to my patent application:
Frankly, I am getting a Déjà vu effect while going through the “Google Squared” application because it appears to be very similar in function to my United States patent application which was filed on April 12, 2007 and as publicly disclosed by the United States Patent and Trademark Office on October 16, 2008, when the patent application was published.
My patent application is titled as “Method And System For Research Using Computer Based Simultaneous Comparison And Contrasting Of A Multiplicity Of Subjects Having Specific Attributes Within Specific Contexts” bearing Document Number “20080256023” and Inventor name “Nair Satheesh” which may be viewed at http://patft.uspto.gov/ upon Patent Applications: Quick Search.
Google Squared appears to be using at least some if not many of the same methods and systems as set forth by me more than two years ago in my patent application. In fact there are many more methods and systems disclosed in my patent application which I believe will help resolve certain inaccuracies found in current Google Squared application.
I have issued legal notices to Google through my Patent Attorney in the US but Google has not responded yet to any of my notices.
Wolfram takes the cake.