Despite the over-hyped headlines over at TechCrunch, Wolfram Alpha and Google Squared will not compete in the same space. Wolfram is for scientists and researchers, and Google Squared will be suited for real end-users. Squared is built to compare large sets of “things” (dog breeds, roller coasters, digital cameras) that have specific, machine parseable metadata, while Wolfram has a human-curated database that is built to give deep, specific data about one thing.
Here are a few queries I think Wolfram will answer, but Google Squared wouldn’t:
- France’s GDP (graphed over time)
- Bank of America stock price (graphed over time)
- Where is the International Space Station right now?
All of these queries can be answered by Wolfram because it has a rich set of data around each of these objects. However, Google Squared seems to be tailored to help you compare objects making it suitable for queries like:
- Finding digital cameras with X megapixels or Y focal length
- Finding a USB hub with more than 5 ports
- Finding a dog breed less than 15 pounds suitable for people with allergies
- Finding a 50″-56″ LCD with at least 3 HDMI outs, a contrast ratio of > 1000:1, and a three-year warranty
The two products serve two markets, and should not be compared. In essence, Wolfram will give you information about a thing, Google Squared will help you find that thing.
For the record, Google’s approach is much more technically impressive, and, I’d say, something of a Holy Grail of web spiders. This is the first time a general web spider has been designed to actually figure out metadata about things that it finds on the web so that those things can be categorized and compared against each other. Wolfram relies on human data entry to make sure it has this level of intelligence, but Google Squared is imitating human intelligence to automate the process.
Google Squared is certain to be integrated with Google’s Shopping Search in the near future, making it a serious competitor to PriceGrabber and other price comparison engines, because it will let users filter and sort by even more fields than they could before. If you watch the video on the TechCrunch article, just imagine a column on the right side with prices. Watch out, PriceGrabber.
