Google has launched Google Squared, a rich search feature that is meant to take the good fight to the over hyped and under delivering Wolfram Alpha.

Google Squared attempts to group search results based on a query, for example American Presidents. The results are delivered in a dynamic spreadsheet layout that can be built upon, or edited. The benefit is the delivery of easy to digest results.

Many have speculated that Google Squared was meant to be Google’s play at Wolfram Alpha, but it’s a different tool. Squared has a better depth of results because results are based on Google’s extensive search index, vs Wolfram Alpha’s requirement that data be added to the system. Wolfram though has better depth in terms of refined queries: if it has the data, you can break it out far better vs Google Squared, and you can do a lot more with it.

The surprise comparison is one to Microsoft’s Bing. I still can’t replicate the results in the Bing ads here in Australia (I’m still not sure if that’s geo-related), but I can group hotels for example in Google Squared. The Google results don’t offer usable price and star ratings (very hit and miss), but at least it does group without a fuss. Here’s a comparison:

Google Squared on “hotels in New York”

Bing on “hotels in New York” (notably with Bing set to United States)

I’m not enthralled by Google Squared because it’s not that exciting, but likewise it could become a useful tool for users that require grouped data.

Google Squared: a reasonable start is a post from: The Inquisitr

The problem with an intense hype campaign is that high expectations are often hard to meet in reality. When the search engine Cuil launch in 2008, it claimed among other things it was going to be a Google killer, and instead became a noun used to describe a hyped service that fails on execution.

This years Cuil will be decided at the end of the year, but the leading candidate by a long way in undoubtedly Wolfram Alpha.

The “computational knowledge engine” that promised to revolutionize the world launch Friday Saturday…actually, I’m not sure. It didn’t launch Friday night despite a live web cast that dragged on for hours that was suppose to detail the launch. It possibly launched Saturday, least it’s working now….well, if you call it that.

The idea behind Wolfram Alpha is a sound one: an engine that can deliver usable data, as opposed to search results like Google. However, the execution lacks on a couple of fronts. The main one is data, or specifically lack of data. Simply data queries come up blank, for example asking for the population of Victoria, Australia delivers the population of Hong Kong and Australia…but not Victoria. The capital of Victoria, Australia…nothing (Google: Melbourne). Victoria Australia as a query…nothing (Google: Wikipedia entry, official tourist site, pictures). Where you do get data, it’s old. For example Population of Canberra offers stats from 2004 (Google 2008). It’s not an Australian stats thing either: population of Palo Alto came back with 2004 figures as well (Google no direct answer, did link though to sites.)

Then there’s the depth problem. If statistics and numbers are where Wolfram is suppose to shine, you’d expect there to be decent time depth to numbers. There isn’t. GDP for the United States stops dead at 1970. Stock prices don’t seem to go back far at all (a search for IBM at a set date in 2006 came up blank.) Where I’d hoped this would work was in statistical analysis, but you can’t compare stats that aren’t in the system.

There are some things it does reasonably well. Straight mathematical calculations are easy, and obtaining basic information to basic questions, things like a weather forecast, star charts etc. The thing though is that although Wolfram presents some of this data in a more interesting way, many of these things can be obtained from Google. In fact, Google gives nicer graphics on a weather forecast.

Then there’s the uptime/ speed issue. As I type this at 1:30am Pacific time, I’m constantly hitting error messages on Wolfram telling me they’re overloaded. When I don’t get the message, it’s slow. Maybe not tediously slow, but a lot slower than Google. When playing with Wolfram for fun, not a big issue, but if you tried to use it regularly, I’m betting it would become painful.

It is early days yet with Wolfram Alpha, but it’s important to remember that 12 months later Cuil is only remembered for the complete let down their hype was. Wolfram so far is heading in the same direction.

Wolfram Alpha: I can’t believe it’s not Cuil! is a post from: The Inquisitr