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Google Delivering Factual Answers
nam37 wrote in about a Macworld article which reads: "Google
Inc. on Thursday began delivering factual answers for some queries at the
top of its results page, to save users from having to navigate over to other
sites and look for the information. For example, if a user enters the query
'Portugal population,' Google returns the answer -- 10.5 million -- along with a
link to the Web page where the information came from, which in this case is the
population page of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's Factbook. The
query 'who is Jane Fonda?' triggers the answer '... is an Academy Award winning
American actress, model, writer, producer, activist and philanthropist' and
provides the link to the Wikipedia online encyclopedia's entry for the actress.
A small percentage of queries currently trigger these factual answers, but the
service, called Google Q&A, is in its early stages, said Peter Norvig,
Google's director of search quality."
This is no doubt a good service for users, but will it attract complaints from site owners like AFP?
Personally I would rather get the answer without going into a site and read through things to find it, and if I want to, I can click on the link and find out more from the site. However the content providers will certainly want you to come to their sites as soon as possible, look around and maybe explore other sections?
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
People criticize Wikipedia for being something that gets information from online sources. At least Wikipedia has a fellowship of users to prevent abuse, or misinformation from being on a topic.
Yes, I know some of the answers will be coming from Wikipedia (And people wonder why google is supporting them). But what about the other sites?
Of course, there's a link to the site in question, but as is asked of Wikipedia all the time, what level of accountability is there that this information is correct?
Also, how does it determine which sites are authoritative in this manner? Is this relevance automated, or are Google employees entering in sites that they see as authoritative on the matter. For that matter, what is their criteria for deeming a site accurate?
Google may be cool, but most of its algorithms and technology are closed. We have no idea how accurate the information will end up being, and also, how corruptible.
After all, who trusts what the CIA tells us about anything? :)
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Try searching for "Who was the President of the United States in 1996" and you get Pat Choate. What a joke. Try it.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=1%2F0&btnG=Go ogle+SearchAnswer?
what is the answer to life, the universe, and everything? although it comes from the Calculator, not from Q and A.
My query:
"Which search engine is the best?"
Google's response:
"AskJeeves."
"Portugal population" works, but "portugal population" does not, neither does "population of Portugal"
So it's not very robust yet.. But it looks promising.
So, how long do we think it will be exactly until the Google Pidgeon Clusters become self aware and begin to correlate all this data only to come up with 42, and a recipe for a nice cup of tea?
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
It doesn't answer one of the most important questions of our modern times:
"What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?"
I've been curious about Britney's actual breast size for a long time now. Maybe Google will help us end this debate once and for all.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Compare the formatting for the question from the article, who is jane fonda, with another question: what is google.
You can do a similar comparison between a couple of search terms from other postings: what is the slashdot effect vs. who was president of the usa in 1996.
Google (currently) appears to format answers it's sure about (what's google, what's the slashdot effect) with an icon and a link to "define:term". Fuzzier matches (Jane Fonda and the putative president) get the nonsequitur text "Property:" and an "According to:" disclaimer.
This looks like something interesting, but clearly still in the early beta. Which is *great*! I love getting a peek behind the curtain.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Type in "pi" and you get "pi = 3.14159265"
5 10582097494459230781640628620899862803482534211706 79821480865132823066470938446095505822317253594081 28481117450284102701938521105559644622948954930381 96442881097566593344612847564823378678316527120190 91456485669234603486104543266482133936072602491412 73724587006606315588174881520920962829254091715364 36
EVERYBODY knows it's 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937
I hate it when they fudge data like that.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
answer:
"First Post!" is a phenomenon of Internet discussion groups (notably Slashdot and LiveJournal), where participants strive to be the first person to add a comment ("post") to a new article or discussion thread. The phenomenon is largely confined to sites that have reached a high degree of popularity, such that users are genuinely surprised to see an article without any associated comments. There is also the necessary condition that comments are displayed in chronological order (meaning the first ...
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Well I guess they really are out to do no evil, as this idea is completely counter-productive to the current way they make money, which is by essentially getting people to click paid for search results. If the answer i'm looking for is told to me right at the top, random people will be less likely to click "Find more Jane Fonda at Ebay.com"
Has there ever been a slashdot thread in which a first post and goatse were on topic and insightful?
Looks like google is the one playing catch up to microsoft this time. Microsoft search has had this feature since it was in beta. And it even gets teh president in 1996 question correct.
+ united+states+in+1996&FORM=QBHP
http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=president+of
How Much Wood Could a Woodchuck Chuck If a Woodchuck Could Chuck Wood?
"As much wood as a woodchuck would if a woodchuck could chuck wood"
Genius!
Probably old news to many but...
If you search for a title of a recent movie, or optionally add a ZIP code it will give you the aggregate out of five "star score" and a list of theaters and showtimes near you for the given film.
A search for "Robots 55419" yields the following:
Pretty damned handy if you ask me!
Also, doing "NWA 0355" yields the status of Northwest Flight 0355...there are similar little things for weather and even FedEx/UPS/USPS packages too.
Anybody aware of any other cools ones?
-AP
The "what is" searches are taking from glossary. "what is foo" returns the first entry from "define:foo" along with a slightly re-ordered web search for "foo". This is a rather minor new feature: really just a UI tweak.
The ability to search for facts is new, unrelated, and much more impressive (even if there aren't many facts in it yet).
Sig:Why copyright isn't a fundamental human right
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just Google.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank