Google Buys AI Social Search Service Aardvark

eldavojohn writes "MIT's Tech Review is covering an acquisition it finds very interesting. Google (which recently announced Buzz) has acquired Aardvark. The review covered Aardvark and the artificial intelligence it uses in its searches in 2009."

Comments

Nose-y.

[Ostracus]

Interesting name for a social service. An animal with a long nose that sticks it in crevices and laps up insects. How metaphorical.

Re:More Clutter in googles interface?

[Unoti]

I think they realize that, and it appears that Wave is an important part of fixing it. Gmail and Buzz I use in a single window- my Buzzes run inside Gmail pretty seamlessly in a single window. And it appears to me that Buzz is really a wave app.

Re:More Clutter in googles interface?

[pvanheus]

I also thought that when I first looked at Buzz.... but then I realised that Buzz is actually working off a rather minimalist integration of different websites model. This is actually a good thing - so instead of Facebook's model of providing "albums" and "notes", etc, I can publish a "newsfeed" that features the pictures I upload to flickr, the videos I put on youtube, the blog items I post on blogger, etc. Done right this is much much more powerful than Facebook - and part of "done right" will have to be integrating good ways of finding people - both by attributes such as name and location, and also by "group" - organisational or interest-based affiliation.

Re:Hasn't this been done?

[biryokumaru]

Living in NYC, the vast majority of questions I get asked on Aardvark consist of "Where's a good place to go drinking?" and the like. I don't think verification is necessarily called for.