Google intros Q&A service
Posted by malebolgia on 07 April 2005 - 20:56 · 47 comments & 5663 views
Google Inc. on Thursday began delivering factual answers for some queries at the top of its results page, to save users from having to navigate over to other sites and look for the information. For example, if a user enters the query "Portugal population," Google returns the answer -- 10.5 million -- along with a link to the Web page where the information came from, which in this case is the population page of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's Factbook.

The query "who is Jane Fonda?" triggers the answer "... is an Academy Award winning American actress, model, writer, producer, activist and philanthropist" and provides the link to the Wikipedia online encyclopedia's entry for the actress. A small percentage of queries currently trigger these factual answers, but the service, called Google Q&A, is in its early stages, said Peter Norvig, Google's director of search quality.

News source: Macworld





There are 47 additional comments
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(3 replies) Quote this comment Reply to this comment #1 Posted by greg.douglas on 07 Apr 2005 - 21:03
they dun it again
Quote this comment #1.1 Posted by Express on 07 Apr 2005 - 22:53
Seems like a copy of MSN's Encarta Answers.

Portugal population: http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?FORM=MS...ugal+population
Who is Jane Fonda?: http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?FORM=MS...s+Jane+Fonda%3F

I think Yahoo will follow soon.
Quote this comment #1.2 Posted by threedaysdwn on 07 Apr 2005 - 23:37
I thought of this as soon as I saw it. MSN Search did this a few months ago.
Quote this comment #1.3 Posted by Jugalator on 08 Apr 2005 - 02:42
"I think Yahoo will follow soon."

Yahoo! France already does.

And surprise surpise, they also use Wikipedia for the answers.
Seems very likely because both Google and Yahoo happen to host Wikipedia servers nowadays.

I think they've made a deal

"MSN Search did this a few months ago. "

Yes, and "years" for Ask Jeeves.
Doesn't stop it from being good to have though.
(2 replies) Quote this comment Reply to this comment #2 Posted by tiwaris on 07 Apr 2005 - 21:12
They never stop innovating.
Quote this comment #2.1 Posted by chacho on 07 Apr 2005 - 22:38
MSN has been doing this for a while using Encarta for answers.
Quote this comment #2.2 Posted by Jugalator on 08 Apr 2005 - 02:35
Yep, and actually Yahoo! France (I think there was the french Yahoo team designing it, but it'll come to the english version too) introduced this just a few days ago. They're using Wikipedia.

And Ask Jeeves was probably first, counting all of them. It was part of their idea to make their engine unique.

edit: Oh, cool, Google also use Wikipedia!! This just HAVE to be a thing from both Google and Yahoo recently starting to host the Wikipedia servers!

Last edited by 21023 on 08 Apr 2005 - 02:41
(2 replies) Quote this comment Reply to this comment #3 Posted by digitalslacker on 07 Apr 2005 - 21:15
thats nothing
when i can type "make coffee" and google starts my coffee machine then i'll be impressed
i'm sure it's only like 3 weeks away too
i can't wait
Quote this comment #3.1 Posted by rkv on 07 Apr 2005 - 23:10
http://tinyurl.com/59p53
heh google cant make it for u but can tell u so much abt it u'll never drink coffe again
nice info
Quote this comment #3.2 Posted by DigeratiPrime on 08 Apr 2005 - 00:46
(3 replies) Quote this comment Reply to this comment #4 Posted by phedot on 07 Apr 2005 - 21:21
OMG the Portugal in the example!!! We Rule lol

Good to see that Google is aiming World Domination!
Quote this comment #4.1 Posted by tiagosilva29 on 07 Apr 2005 - 23:04
We sure rule!
Quote this comment #4.2 Posted by SIG on 08 Apr 2005 - 01:56
Quote this comment #4.3 Posted by bush on 08 Apr 2005 - 08:12
yeah, but you didn't win euro2004
(1 reply) Quote this comment Reply to this comment #5 Posted by sloppycode on 07 Apr 2005 - 21:32
Isn't this very old news? Typing stone to kg, inches to cm etc. in google has been giving this result for a long time. Maybe the macworld journalist only just realised it, and typed it up.
Quote this comment #5.1 Posted by chacho on 07 Apr 2005 - 22:38
I believe that the conversions are part of the Calculator feature, not part of this Q&A. This is definitely new.
Quote this comment Reply to this comment #6 Posted by kingbob on 07 Apr 2005 - 21:35
COOL
(2 replies) Quote this comment Reply to this comment #7 Posted by Cryptic_Night on 07 Apr 2005 - 21:44
Awesome. They've done it again.
Quote this comment #7.1 Posted by threedaysdwn on 07 Apr 2005 - 23:39
Done what?

I love Google and a lot that they've done, but this isn't an original feature.

MSN started doing it months ago.
Quote this comment #7.2 Posted by i like chips on 08 Apr 2005 - 13:15
Stop with the "MSN has already done this" replies. Tired of it. Besides, who the hell cares? People actually use MSN??? Google > MSN
Quote this comment Reply to this comment #8 Posted by ThePDW on 07 Apr 2005 - 21:48
Google knows all and sees all!
Quote this comment Reply to this comment #9 Posted by Canadian Canuck on 07 Apr 2005 - 21:54
I was using google last night for a reserach project and typed in something similar to this. I found the tool to be incredibly useful.

Just more proof of Googles domination of the world.

-welcomes new search overloards-
Quote this comment Reply to this comment #10 Posted by eilegz on 07 Apr 2005 - 21:57
is this sorta like ask jeeves? idea anyways good for google but we all waiting for google browser, google IM and why not google OS xDD
(1 reply) Quote this comment Reply to this comment #11 Posted by Blackima on 07 Apr 2005 - 21:59
searched for "who is your daddy"

heh, google knows everything. though only seems to work on google.com, google.co.uk doesn't have the feature
Quote this comment #11.1 Posted by nic on 08 Apr 2005 - 00:55
hehe...good one
Quote this comment Reply to this comment #12 Posted by SlimShady on 07 Apr 2005 - 22:07
This is something I have always wanted. Great ^_^
(1 reply) Quote this comment Reply to this comment #13 Posted by evostrata on 07 Apr 2005 - 22:15
Doesn't work on google.co.uk

Edit: Already posted sorry!
Quote this comment #13.1 Posted by Jugalator on 08 Apr 2005 - 02:39
grr, as usual with some new stuff it's just on the US site, yes :/
I don't get it...

Their "movie:" thing is also brain dead for me using google.se...
It actually tries to search, but don't match anything.

Maybe it think it MUST give me swedish reviews, but of course it doesn't.
How about giving me the next best, english ones? doh...
Quote this comment Reply to this comment #14 Posted by darkhooda on 07 Apr 2005 - 22:40
Neither for Canada. Seems to be US only.
Quote this comment Reply to this comment #15 Posted by Drexthepimp on 07 Apr 2005 - 23:05
Predictive search technology is the best way to go. My personal opinion is when i know what i want, google rocks, but when i need to skim past a result and use my own inference to plot a course that will invoke a reference to what i need it takes a while. Google needs state and a reverse routing algorithm, one that is designed to find search loops. The tighter the loop, the more chance the indirect search is contained within them sites.
(2 replies) Quote this comment Reply to this comment #16 Posted by theyarecomingforyou on 08 Apr 2005 - 00:18
Well, it can give me the population for Russia, Iraq and China (all thnx to info from the CIA...) but can't manage Europe, the EU or the UK. What a poorly thought through idea!! I really hope it is the fault of Google rather than American "intelligence".
Quote this comment #16.1 Posted by Jugalator on 08 Apr 2005 - 02:44
Emmm

"What is the population of Sweden?"
gives:

Sweden
Population: 8,986,400 (July 2004 est.)
According to http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/fields/2119.html

In case of "population of Europe", well, I think it only supports countries.

UK works btw:

United Kingdom
Population: 60,270,708
According to http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rankorder/2119rank.html - More sources »

Maybe you should check the CIA World Factbook and see for yourself what public intelligence CIA has about countries. It's a heck of a lot actually, down to number of e.g. avg telephones and TV's per inhabitant, military alliances, country analyses, etc. Quite interesting reads.
Quote this comment #16.2 Posted by N_B on 08 Apr 2005 - 09:12
As Jugalator says... You are aware Europe is not a country, aren't you?
Quote this comment Reply to this comment #17 Posted by Black Raven on 08 Apr 2005 - 01:50
Nice feature tho.
Quote this comment Reply to this comment #18 Posted by Help on 08 Apr 2005 - 03:08
hmm.. I wonder if this had anything to do with it... http://www.kevinrose.com/index.php/weblog/comments/the_google_killer/
(6 replies) Quote this comment Reply to this comment #19 Posted by TheSarge on 08 Apr 2005 - 05:09
[The query "who is Jane Fonda?" triggers the answer "... is an Academy Award winning American actress, model, writer, producer, activist and philanthropist"]

Really? Casue it's not doing that for me.
Quote this comment #19.1 Posted by mr.roberts on 08 Apr 2005 - 05:31
Take off the quotes and you will get the answer. At least I got the answer very quickly.

Great feature. I am a fan of Google. I believe that their technology is great!
Quote this comment #19.2 Posted by TheSarge on 08 Apr 2005 - 05:57
The quotes in my above post were for your benfit, not google's. It was there so that my sentance follwed proper english rules for formating a sentace.
So, just to be clear, If I type
who is Jane Fonda?
into google, I don't get anything but the usualy Google search results and those useless ****ing "Paid" results (which I hate).

Quote this comment #19.3 Posted by kaffra on 08 Apr 2005 - 06:06
it works on google.com, are you using a local version?
Quote this comment #19.4 Posted by TheSarge on 08 Apr 2005 - 06:52
yeah.google.ca

And before one of you noobs chimes in with 'So use the .com version..

hey, guess what happens if I type google.com into my browser?
First one to gues correctly wins a lifetime supply of Canadian snow (some conditions apply).
Quote this comment #19.5 Posted by smart001 on 08 Apr 2005 - 07:10
ooh ooh, Google . Ca comes up.

I win

Just idding, I am stationed in Germany and ad the same problem. What I had to do was delete my google cookies then type in google.com, google will check your location and bring back google.ca, there is a little link (or was for me that said go to google.com, click on that and google . com should now be the google that you use. you can also I think go into preferences and choose which one you want. Hope this helps
Quote this comment #19.6 Posted by TheSarge on 08 Apr 2005 - 07:28
We have a winner!
You can claim your snow from October through to to March, any winter.
Snow: It's not just for Igloos anymore.
Quote this comment Reply to this comment #20 Posted by Dirtie on 08 Apr 2005 - 06:43
I <3 Google.
Quote this comment Reply to this comment #21 Posted by smart001 on 08 Apr 2005 - 07:07
I know that there have been other services that have done this, but it never made me want to use them. I still used Google because overall it was better (in my eyes, not trying to start a flame war). Now Google is even better and when I do a search, I get the answer I am looking for even faster. This just made Google uch more relevant to me and I really like this service, even though it is still a little rudimentary. It will get better though!

Go Google! Thanks for trying to run the world!
Quote this comment Reply to this comment #22 Posted by nw_raptor on 08 Apr 2005 - 08:45
"What is neowin.net" works!
Quote this comment Reply to this comment #23 Posted by Rickie on 08 Apr 2005 - 12:21
Cool
Quote this comment Reply to this comment #24 Posted by KXM on 08 Apr 2005 - 23:20
This thing sucks:
where in the world carmen sandiego?
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