One of the differentiating factors of Wolfram|Alpha: Gone.
Google's doesn't require a 250mb plugin to become interactive (just a webgl capable browser...). And it seems to be about 8 times faster than W|A...
W|A still does a lot of things other sites don't do, but it tends to be unusably slow, and inconsistent (running same query twice in a row will sometimes not give all of the same results).
I figure the end is probably closer than one might expect for W|A. They don't seem to be moving quick enough to stay infront of the curve forever. Also, the site is becoming littered with obtrusive ads, and that's a pretty negative experience. (I also hear Wolfram's company may be struggling.)
This should have been praise for Google's new tool, but it turned into a rant on Wolfram|Alpha... whoops.
Competition is good for both parties. Wolfram Alpha challenged Google to rethink what people search for to some degree, and Google's rigored performance should challenge Wolfram Alpha to become more performance aware and prevent them from taking too many features "premium".
And in the end, it is a win / win for users. I am always happy when the insanely smart people at Google have hard things to implement like this than how to integrate the posts of my friends on Google+ into my search results for a unicode table.
Wolfram Alpha also seems to bail out when a mathematical expression exceeds a certain complexity, which makes it fairly useless for the only thing I want to use it for - evaluating hairy integrals and other long expressions. Or worse, it just "interprets" it as a part of my original expression and calculates that, as if I just typed out the rest of it because I enjoy typing random symbols. It seems like such a waste to fire up Mathematica every time but I haven't found any comparable online tools.
I think W|A could have been a great tool for this kind of thing but instead it tried to cover every subject instead of doing one thing well.
The nail in the coffin for me on W|A was requiring a login in order to copy plain text results. (Even though the same data is copyable in the DOM, they actually go out of their way to obscure it!)
I don't think people understand how noxious this registration-obession is, especially when you need utilize it to access basic functionality.
I don't really go to W|A anymore unless there's something specifically math or statistics related that I'm looking for. That action killed any kind of casual use for me.
I didn't see anyone mention this specific fear, but a lot of people talked about this in the context of competition with Wolfram Alpha. What I fear is that google (on purpose or not) will outshine Wolfram's offering, push W|A out of the game, and then in 3-6 years decide it is not a feature worth keeping up.
Just like code search, viable companies may fail due to Google toying with their entire industry, and then Google may just drop us back to the stone age in terms of that category of product. The fact that this is a fear at all points (in my mind) to some issues of monopoly.
Then again, maybe I'm just too cynical and worried.
I don't fear Google dropping us behind where we are, I fear another IE6.
IE6 back in the day was actually quite good. But because it was really good (among other other more shady things) everything else died off and it stagnated.
What I fear is google keeping us in a local maxima of search and having us stagnate there for a decade.
I don't think W|A is going to disappear (I work on W|A). We do a lot more than plot functions of one and two variables -- after all, Apple chose us to power much of Siri's factual question answering.
We're pioneering automatic analysis of new kinds of input, from images to long-form text to raw data (what I work on). We can out-innovate Google, even if they do a really nice job of copying our old ideas.
Of course, sometimes, like with Google Squared, they don't do such a nice job.
What monopoly? Google doesnt remotely have a monopoly on scientific visualisation, and a possible monopoly on search doesnt really overlap with that.
The problem small companies have with Google is Google's _size_, so many of their side projects are bigger than somebody else's entire business. This absolutely doesnt have anything to do with their headstart in search. Whatever project somebody else successfully starts, Google can simply outspend them and reach the goal first, but this isnt specific to Google, you have this problem with any other big solvent company. WA would have the same problem if a producer of toilet tissue with more cash reserves than WA suddenly decided to compete with WA.
Well, this graph viewer is fun, but it's only a tiny sliver of what Wolfram|Alpha can do; if Google wants to "toy with" the industry it will require some more serious toying!
This looks... erm ... neat. A "sophomore OpenGL term project" kind of neat. Wolfram on the other hand does the graphs right [0], which hardly surprising given their 20 years of head start.
On a more general note, this reminds me of old Microsoft's tactics. Google should really stick to the search, but instead they throw together something that mimics competitor's feature. Something that looks more featureful and which is free, but upon closer inspection is effectively a half-ass effort, because it's an entirely different domain that's not their specialty.
Word of caution: I left this open in a Safari tab without thinking about it, and soon found that my Mac's UI was hanging for ~20 seconds every minute or two. Took me half an hour to figure out what was going on.
After fiddling with about:flags and using --ignore-gpu-blacklist on the command line, I got chrome://gpu to report that WebGL is fully enabled. It _still_ doesn't work, with this error reported in the console:
[75:75:1827873622829:ERROR:command_buffer_proxy.cc(110)] Could not send GpuCommandBufferMsg_Initialize.
Feels like a gimmick... Something MS used to do well - take the shiniest feature of a competitor & implement it. The graph plot is just the tip of the iceberg - W|A does much much more, and Google might drop this in a few months if they don't see traction.
I thought Page spoke to Jobs and got a lesson in 'focus' ?
If Google really comes up with a viable competitor to W|A, with all the datasets, math, etc., that's one thing. Just copying the shiniest toy feature is a little dull...
I spent a good minute reformatting the formula in my head, trying to figure out the significance of the equation, before I went, "oh, duh, it's the fact that it's rendering a formula in 3D within a Google result!"
Thank you, Google, for making me uninstall some nVidia packages from Ubuntu that were apparently stopping WebGL from working. The tool you built is also kinda nifty, and I might even use it when trying to help people online with mathematics.
Nonetheless, my day-to-day search traffic is still being offloaded to DuckDuckGo and my day-to-day image traffic is still going to Blekko. It's not you, it's me.
Blekko's good for images? I gave it a few tries a while back but I got distracted by the slash syntaxes and forgot what I was looking for :) I'll give it another try.
Today I mainly use Yahoo's image search for images.
Disabling JS on Google Search (with Opera's site-specific preference or NoScript) also does a lot of good to make this once-great search engine somewhat more usable (not for the results, of course, but at least it's not continuously stealing input focus and mucking up its own search results as you try to navigate with your browser's keyboard shortcuts).
This is impressive. Maybe the programmers who did this can speak to the financial charting side so their charts will plot a moving average using data that is actually off the left side of the chart, instead of omitting those points as if the data does not exist.
This is very nice; one addition that would make it even better is support for implicitly defined functions and relationships. If we could graph things like x^2+(y-x^(2/3))^2=1 directly, that'd be awesome.
Would be nice if it had a color bar (legend) to see which color is which value, though. The red/green/blue used below the graph for the axes ranges looks like one, and that is a bit confusing.
[+] [-] sceaj|14 years ago|reply
Google's doesn't require a 250mb plugin to become interactive (just a webgl capable browser...). And it seems to be about 8 times faster than W|A...
W|A still does a lot of things other sites don't do, but it tends to be unusably slow, and inconsistent (running same query twice in a row will sometimes not give all of the same results).
I figure the end is probably closer than one might expect for W|A. They don't seem to be moving quick enough to stay infront of the curve forever. Also, the site is becoming littered with obtrusive ads, and that's a pretty negative experience. (I also hear Wolfram's company may be struggling.)
This should have been praise for Google's new tool, but it turned into a rant on Wolfram|Alpha... whoops.
[+] [-] zanny|14 years ago|reply
And in the end, it is a win / win for users. I am always happy when the insanely smart people at Google have hard things to implement like this than how to integrate the posts of my friends on Google+ into my search results for a unicode table.
[+] [-] fferen|14 years ago|reply
I think W|A could have been a great tool for this kind of thing but instead it tried to cover every subject instead of doing one thing well.
[+] [-] Karunamon|14 years ago|reply
I don't think people understand how noxious this registration-obession is, especially when you need utilize it to access basic functionality.
I don't really go to W|A anymore unless there's something specifically math or statistics related that I'm looking for. That action killed any kind of casual use for me.
[+] [-] wcarss|14 years ago|reply
Just like code search, viable companies may fail due to Google toying with their entire industry, and then Google may just drop us back to the stone age in terms of that category of product. The fact that this is a fear at all points (in my mind) to some issues of monopoly.
Then again, maybe I'm just too cynical and worried.
[+] [-] smokinn|14 years ago|reply
IE6 back in the day was actually quite good. But because it was really good (among other other more shady things) everything else died off and it stagnated.
What I fear is google keeping us in a local maxima of search and having us stagnate there for a decade.
[+] [-] taliesinb|14 years ago|reply
We're pioneering automatic analysis of new kinds of input, from images to long-form text to raw data (what I work on). We can out-innovate Google, even if they do a really nice job of copying our old ideas.
Of course, sometimes, like with Google Squared, they don't do such a nice job.
[+] [-] muuh-gnu|14 years ago|reply
What monopoly? Google doesnt remotely have a monopoly on scientific visualisation, and a possible monopoly on search doesnt really overlap with that.
The problem small companies have with Google is Google's _size_, so many of their side projects are bigger than somebody else's entire business. This absolutely doesnt have anything to do with their headstart in search. Whatever project somebody else successfully starts, Google can simply outspend them and reach the goal first, but this isnt specific to Google, you have this problem with any other big solvent company. WA would have the same problem if a producer of toilet tissue with more cash reserves than WA suddenly decided to compete with WA.
[+] [-] comex|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cdvonstinkpot|14 years ago|reply
https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=sin%285.5x%29*cos%285*...
https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=1%2F%20sin%2...
https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=sqrt%28x*x%2By*y%29%2B...
https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=5000-140*%28x*x%2By*y%...
https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=sin%28x^2%2By^2%29%2F%...
https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=tanh%28y%28y^4%2B5x^4-...
https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=%28x^2%2B%28%283+y%29%...
https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=sin%285.5x%29*cos%285*...
https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=100-3%2F%28sqrt%28x^2%...
https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=5+%2B+%28-sqrt%281-x^2...
https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=100-3%2F%28sqrt%28x^2%...
[+] [-] huhtenberg|14 years ago|reply
On a more general note, this reminds me of old Microsoft's tactics. Google should really stick to the search, but instead they throw together something that mimics competitor's feature. Something that looks more featureful and which is free, but upon closer inspection is effectively a half-ass effort, because it's an entirely different domain that's not their specialty.
[0] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=sqrt%28x*x%2By*y%29%2B3...
[+] [-] driverdan|14 years ago|reply
Edit: Here's the official announcement http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/03/graphing-on-googlec...
[+] [-] darien|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hendler|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] janardanyri|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nsns|14 years ago|reply
Elasborations - https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&pws=0&#....
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&pws=0&#....
[+] [-] MyNewAccount|14 years ago|reply
what i made for the lulz: https://www.google.com/search?btnG=1&pws=0&q=sqrt(x*...
[+] [-] tensafefrogs|14 years ago|reply
sqrt(xx+yyy)+3cos(sqrt(xx+yy))+5
[+] [-] postfuturist|14 years ago|reply
EDIT: I really doesn't work because "NVIDIA cards with nouveau drivers in Linux are crash-prone." Firefox has no trouble, strangely.
[+] [-] huhtenberg|14 years ago|reply
Courtesy of Firefox 11.
(edit) Apparently webgl.force-enabled needs to be set to true in about:config, and then it works.
[+] [-] naner|14 years ago|reply
I am also using Firefox on Linux and was actually suprised this worked. I assumed WebGL was still disabled by default for us.
[+] [-] cleaver|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lloeki|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] postfuturist|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] valinor4|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Foy|14 years ago|reply
Shame that my favourite browser doesn't support WebGL. :( But props to Google for making their search engine that much cooler.
[+] [-] Florin_Andrei|14 years ago|reply
Chrome 18 on Ubuntu 11.04 with real crappy Intel Mobile 4 Chipset and it works.
[+] [-] why-el|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reedlaw|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wolf550e|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drivebyacct2|14 years ago|reply
WebGL is definitely not disabled. You either disabled it or your GPU is not on the whitelist (or is on the blacklist).
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] blrgeek|14 years ago|reply
I thought Page spoke to Jobs and got a lesson in 'focus' ?
If Google really comes up with a viable competitor to W|A, with all the datasets, math, etc., that's one thing. Just copying the shiniest toy feature is a little dull...
[+] [-] btr41n|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] laconian|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] laconian|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] laconian|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] luser001|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ars|14 years ago|reply
On the website it rotates automatically and you can also control it manually, it's not static like in the screenshot.
[+] [-] sylvinus|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zobzu|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ordinary|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] georgieporgie|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drostie|14 years ago|reply
Nonetheless, my day-to-day search traffic is still being offloaded to DuckDuckGo and my day-to-day image traffic is still going to Blekko. It's not you, it's me.
[+] [-] tripzilch|14 years ago|reply
Today I mainly use Yahoo's image search for images.
Disabling JS on Google Search (with Opera's site-specific preference or NoScript) also does a lot of good to make this once-great search engine somewhat more usable (not for the results, of course, but at least it's not continuously stealing input focus and mucking up its own search results as you try to navigate with your browser's keyboard shortcuts).
[+] [-] ed2417|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edwardy20|14 years ago|reply
For the rest of you who are unlucky like me, here's a GIF a Redditor kindly posted: http://i.imgur.com/58mgx.gif
[+] [-] delan|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wladimir|14 years ago|reply
Would be nice if it had a color bar (legend) to see which color is which value, though. The red/green/blue used below the graph for the axes ranges looks like one, and that is a bit confusing.
[+] [-] hsshah|14 years ago|reply