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Wolfram Alpha

What Google's New Rival Knows -- and Doesn't

Von Konrad Lischka and Matthias Kremp

Part 10: Conclusion -- Strong Design, Weak Database

In demonstrations, the Wolfram Alpha software handles information in a very impressive way. The search engine is able to manipulate data in order to create more information. For example, automatically creating statistical comparisons from the simple input of multiple countries is something that neither Google nor any of the other search engines available today can do. Wolfram Alpha functions wonderfully when it comes to processing information.

But its current beta version only rarely manages to do this well. Wolfram Alpha only works well when the associated databases already have the data they need. For example, a search for viewer figures for US television channels is not something the search engine understands.

Wolfram Alpha has the feel of a tool created by scientists for other scientists. In fact, when asked certain technical and scientific questions, it can deliver marvellously detailed answers.

But, with certain economic topics, for example, the quality of the presented results is questionable. What good, for example, are circulation numbers for daily newspapers if you don't also provide information about the time frame? This is numerical information -- and just the sort of data that Wolfram Alpha is good at. But, judging from the breadth of the database and the quality of the data processing, the developers seem to have placed much more value on certain areas of knowledge than on others -- leaving out many useful economic, political and cultural facts.

This could be excused as a necessary limitation, and perhaps the entire project should be appreciated for showing new possibilities in data processing. But, either way, it's still difficult to explain why Wolfram Alpha occasionally delivers odd results without listed sources (such as when it searches for languages spoken in Germany). How can you trust an information processor that sometimes spits out results you don't understand, doesn't explain how it came to these answers and doesn't reveal its sources?

At its current stage of development, Wolfram Alpha puts on an impressive show. This software can do a hell of a lot. But as an everyday search tool, it still has a good way to go.