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Google Goes to Answers.com
tod_miller writes "Google has changed its definitions link from dictionary.com to answers.com. A google search for juxtaposition shows the effect. What is interesting is that answers.com pulls information from wikipedia.org, which was provided bandwidth by google.com [and now Google is providing a service that will be used worldwide to pull information off Wikipedia]. Aside from having both a dictionary.com and a wikipedia.org search box in FireFox (as well as Google) the definition link on Google is still useful and I regularly check it for obscure uses or exact definitions of words. Now it uses answers.com we do not get all the different forms of the word, but we do get any medical or wikipedic information. Interestingly, answers.com does not use Google AdSense, but commission junction that looks like it. There is no announcement yet from Google of their change." This change took place several weeks ago, as players of e-scrabble and other compulsive word-checkers might have noticed. Update: 03/13 23:20 GMT by T : (Also mentioned in passing last month.) Update: 03/14 02:13 GMT by T : Brion Vibber writes: "Google does *not* provide any bandwidth to Wikipedia at this time, except in the sense that they 'use up' our bandwidth when people using
their search engine come to our site. ;)"
Why not pulling it directly from the source?
Slashdot posted this over a month ago. A simple search for answers.com would reveal that.
That said, this is definitely a good thing. Dictionary.com is fine and all, but answers.com provides a lot more information for most words. It'll be interesting what happens once Google links to even more Wikipedia content. I think it'll become a little more well known and more used as a result. Most non-Slashdot crowd still haven't heard of Wikipedia. Perhaps being linked prominently from Google would change that.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
answers.com has a much cleaner interface than dictionary.com I still prefer webster.com though.
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
Does anyone find it a bit disconcerting that answers.com gets ad revenue for wikipedia's content. Exactly how much is google funding wikipedia? IMO, they should fund the entire operation considering how much money they (and answers.com) must be making off the content. Think of how much traffic google must generate to the "definition" link in each search.
Of course there are bugs in the content of Wikipedia, Wiktionary, and the other Wikimedia Foundation projects. But then there are also bugs in Britannica and bugs in Webster's. No reference is bug-free[1].
[1] The faithful allege that Handbook for the Human Soul is perfect, but even there, translations from the original ancient Greek and Hebrew can be dodgy.
I'm happy about this change, when I noticed it a couple weeks ago. Dictionary.com is good, but all it only offers definitions. If I wanted those, I could use the google parameter define:WORD. Answers gives a great deal more information. Almost everything I want can be found there -- and to think, I didn't even know about it before google started using it (although I did know about wikipedia).
It's also not as annoying, ad-wise, as dictionary.com.
It'd be nice for google to make their own answers.com type site. Not sure if they will though.
It might be a cleaner interface but it doesn't seem to be near as comprehensive. For example, I looked up the word "roynish" earlier today. Google drew a blank. Dictionary.com had it. This isn't the first time this has happened, although I don't recall the other words off the top of my head.
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
Now people will be astrotrufing Wikipedia with sales pitches for their products. Not that that is necessarily bad but the content will tend toward not being less concise. It could become more of a junkpile of stuff like the web is now as opposed to the well defined concise descriptions that they have now. Perhaps some form of moderation should be applied.
This is actually the interesting part of the article:
answers.com does not use Google AdSense
It would seem a natural for them to do it, given all the traffic they get from Google... seems like a no-brainer, really.
What Slashdot hasn't covered about Google is Yahoo!'s answer to AdSense. Technically, it's Yahoo! news, but it could materially affect Google's profits...
EricThe first time I had ever used Wikipedia was when Hunter S Thompson died.
Upon going to his page, and reading it thoroughly, I was treated to the little known fact that "he was a big supporter of child-pornography".
This of course came as a shock to me - so I started trying to find ANY coroborating evidence elsewhere.
Of course there was none, and within a few minutes the Wiki page was corrected of the stupiditiy.
With this, I have very little faith in the reliability of Wiki pages. Sure, I happened to know enough about HTS to realize that that statement was probably false, and knew enough to double-check it. But what if I didn't? What about the other X thousand people who read the page at that time, and never bothered refreshing?
This IS a fundamental problem with Wikis.
...Also, I didn't know Buggalo could fly.
As I recall reading (I don't remember where), one of the reasons for the switch was because answers.com is free ie. you can access everything without paying for "premium" services. For example, answers.com has a pronounciation feature for free, whereas dictionary.com charges for it. Don't know how true this is because I lost my source.
And what about the featured article removal candidates? The existence of these would seem to indicate that the quality of articles, over time, tends not towards brilliance, but mediocrity.
In the past, I've vastly improved articles in the 'pedia (earning much praise in the process, so "improvement" isn't just my ego speaking) and returned to them after many months, only to find them unreadably disorganized or studded dangerously with errors. To me, this asymptotic approach to shitsville is even more damning than the fact that featured articles don't usually remain so for long.
Not necessarily. It is possible, however it doesn't tend to happen. One thing is that the articles have remained of high quality but our selection criteria has become tougher. During the "brilliant prose" days we had some articles that were pretty good (see for instance triangle, however we recently removed this - not because it got worse, but because had it been submitted to FAC today it would not get through.
Incidently, I'm always glad to see someone who helps improve articles, and so I thank you for doing this. That's why I've added my baseline experiment: we can refer people to the "baseline", which people can't modify. As with any wiki, errors and disorganisation can occur. I've seen it myself.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Guess the mods didn't like the Rather joke, but to call me a troll when I made an informative statement. I mean go to Answers.com and you will see they use Google Ads.
Answers.com is violating the license in which some content (particularly photographs) are included in the wikipedia. For instance, the I gave a license to the following image Lemonade to the Wikipedia, under the Creative Commons share alike license. It is used in the article Lemonade.
This image is reproduced in answers.com: lemonade without any mention of the author (me). That is against the license I placed on the image. It is linked from the article Lemonade.
>> answers.com has a much cleaner interface than dictionary.com
Yep, just changed my longtime Mozilla d keyword.
A person claiming to be you [http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=142358&cid=11 929566] mentioned on Slashdot.org that you believed that the image [[:Image:Limonadedmg.jpg]] was not licensed with the GFDL but only with the CC-SA license. As the Slashdot post illustrated, that makes life difficult for reusers, who can't expect that the GFDL license will be sufficient. To avoid this, the upload agreement makes all uploads by the creator GFDL licensesd ''in addition to'' any other licenses the uploader may wish to grant.
Please either confirm that you are willing to grant a GFDL license or, at your option, either list it for deletion (wrong license) or let me know so that I can do so. We've no interest at all in compelling you to license it in a way contrary to your wishes but are trying to maintain some consistency for reusers.
The Commons project does accept a broader range of images and you may wish to consider placing it there instead if you don't wish to grant a GFDL license but do still want to make it available for others to use.
You should also consider that your work is arguably a derivative work of the tent design, the logo on the tent and the design of the lemonade squeezer. For that reason, while you may be releasing your portion of the work under one license, you may be making fair use of the work of others, making the combined work fair use. Fair use is not accepted at Commons. It is accepted at en.wikipedia.org but that would require the GFDL license in addition to any others.
Thanks for your assistance in resolving the licensing misunderstanding.
A comparable response should be expected for any similar situations.