| « I know it's stupid but I thought it was funny | Bye, bye Mesh, I hardly knew you, My first foray into web video » |
The Powerset vs. Google challenge
05/15/08
I was hanging in twitter yesterday when I came across a tweet from Jason Calicanis telling us he was online and talking about Powerset's new semantic web search product. He issued a challenge, come up with a blog post comparing Powerset with Google and he would give out a sexy Mahalo mug. Being the swaghound I am I couldn't resist. My question was "How much does a Loonie weigh"? First result is from Powerset, the result an epic fail, The first four results don't contain the answer, the fifth does.
Result two is from Google with site:wikipedia.org to limit searching to Wikipedia. Result, epic pass. The first result is the same as result 5 from Powerset and contains the answer.
Result three is the gold standard, a search on Google for the answer unfettered. First result is the question, second result is the question answered. The best part is that the results marked with the check contain the answer in Google's synopsis, no need to even go to the page.
Ok, Mr. Mahalo, I'm ready for my mug now.
2 comments
Wayne,
Your fetish for swag may be your downfall. You’ve clearly got to much time on your hands. But, then again, who am I to talk. I am up at 11:50 PM reading your blogs. I gotta get a life!
Hey, but the first Powerset hit is from Heinlein, and would be relevant to the book. The interesting bit is where Google either has the orbital mind-control lasers read your mind to know which sense to apply to the question, or finds that more Canadians than Heinlein fans link to pages about the weight of a loonie. Most Heinlein fans would know that it’s 1/6th of that person’s mass and wouldn’t have to write a web page to say so, let alone link to it.
