Do you ever have trouble finding the answers you need on the web?
In the past few years, we've seen relatively few notable improvements in the search engines that form the centerpiece of our web interactions. That's about to change.
At the heart of the matter, people don't want links, they want answers. Next generation engines are evolving to meet this demand.
The first hint of the coming transformation was Microsoft's offering Bing. It's touted as a "decision engine" that "helps you overcome search overload to find the best choice faster."
If Bing represents an incremental step forward, another immature but rapidly evolving newcomer, Wolfram Alpha, could eventually represent a quantum leap.
Billed as a "computational knowledge engine" the company is clear about it's goal: "Today's Wolfram|Alpha is the first step in an ambitious, long-term project to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone".
While the wording might make the tool difficult to envision, trying a few of the suggestions below will quickly add clarity.
- Type the name of the city in which you live into Wolfram Alpha and then into your favorite search engine for comparison.
- Watch impressive examples of the engine's capabilities by viewing at least the first 2 1/2 minutes of the company's demo video, or all thirteen minutes if you have time.
- Type "#10 screw" into Wolfram Alpha and again into your favorite search engine.
- Wolfram Alpha is particularly adept at mathematical calculations. Try typing "derivative of x^4 sin x" into it. Again, compare the result with other engines.
- Review Wolfram Alpha's gallery of examples.
But there's still power in simplicity. On an ever expanding list of engines many ignore the ever-growing mass of web based information in favor of handling a single area such as medicine. Their strategy is obvious: specialize.
Another class of engine bypasses complex search algorithms and semantics processing issues by leveraging the power of social networks. The core idea can be expressed as "ask your friends".
The best known engine of this type is Aardvark. Current search engine "king of the hill" Google was impressed enough with the company's offering to acquire them in February 2010. They plan to continue development of the tool.
How will we get answers from the web a decade from now? Will the market fragment into dozens of specialty engines? Will the order of the day be engines that learn your personal preferences to produce increasingly relevant results? Do you find the newer engines useful?
