Comments on: Google adds very cool Q&A feature

Google adds very cool Q&A feature

JPowers — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 14:50:04 -0800

Google adds very cool Q&A feature: What is the population of Texas? When was Jason Kottke born? When did Hunter S. Thompson die? Google says it works for "celebrities, countries of the world, the planets, the elements, electronics, movies, and anything else we've thought of so far".

By: hackly_fracture

hackly_fracture — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 14:53:26 -0800

Pretty cool, though this cracks me up (from the first link): The following words are very common and were not included in your search: What is the of.

By: caddis

caddis — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 14:54:58 -0800

It works for Jason and not Matt? Aghhhh.

By: knave

knave — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 14:59:15 -0800

Failed on my first question, but this is a cool feature. :)

By: goethean

goethean — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 15:04:34 -0800

Who is god?

By: painquale

painquale — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 15:04:55 -0800

If you ask it who wrote Pride and Prejudice, you get: Jane Austen Property: The author of Pride and Prejudice. That 'property' tag is kinda weird. I wonder what other sorts of properties exist? Or, for that matter, how this thing is automated? Does Google have a stored bunch of categories somewhere? Did they create the categories by hand and then have a program trawl the web to gather info on them?

By: peacay

peacay — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 15:11:46 -0800

I asked: what is soil. This then gives a webs definition page & links.. Very very cool.

By: knave

knave — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 15:11:49 -0800

Interesting questions that it got right:

Who ran the first four minute mile?
Who invented the television?
When did WWII end?
How many people live in Alaska? (note good understanding of my phrasing)

By: fire&wings

fire&wings — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 15:13:38 -0800

This works in normal Google search. Either via it eliminating the irrelevant words in your question, or by returning results where people have asked the same question as you and more often than not received some sort of answer.

By: knave

knave — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 15:27:55 -0800

How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop? I always thought the world may never know.

By: painquale

painquale — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 15:33:23 -0800

I've been playing with this for a bit. Here are a few other questions that surprised me: Where is the Statue of Liberty? Where is the grand canyon? What atomic number is boron? Who is president? (Um... OK... Also see Who is secretary general?) What is Quine's paradox? Who is King Kong? The 'Who is' questions aren't very consistent: they work for Godzilla, Walt Disney, Bertrand Russell, etc., but not Balzac, Jack Welsh, etc. Some of you seem to be misunderstanding what this thing is doing. It's not just returning a list of relevant results; it's giving you the answer you're asking for right at the top of the Google page itself. Pluggin in just 'Maimonides' doesn't work: you have to ask it 'Who was Maimonides?' That Tootsie Pop thing rules. I was trying to think of funny pop-culture questions (Who is Keyser Soze? What is the Matrix?) But couldn't get any to yield a response.

By: gottabefunky

gottabefunky — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 15:36:16 -0800

How much wood a woodchuck would chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood.

By: Fat Guy

Fat Guy — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 15:36:58 -0800

How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? yielded an excellent answer. But the answer to How much wind could a windbreaker break if a windbreaker could break wind? was not too good.

By: Jairus

Jairus — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 15:45:21 -0800

I don't see any answers.

By: Fat Guy

Fat Guy — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 15:48:46 -0800

I don't see any answers. Sorry for the bad phrasing. There are in fact no answers for the windbreaker question. My bad. But adding quotes gives these two results.

By: Foosnark

Foosnark — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 15:53:31 -0800

It got "how long is the tour de france?" but not "how long is the nile?" or "how many miles is the tour de france?" Unfortunately what is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow didn't work, so it's pretty much useless.

By: wendell

wendell — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 15:55:04 -0800

The question I had to ask: Who is Jeeves? (It wouldn't give me direct answers for "What is Jeopardy?", "Where's Waldo?" and "Who wrote the Book of Love?")

By: drezdn

drezdn — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 15:56:01 -0800

You just know there's someone at google think of questions people might ask, I want to be that person.

By: JGreyNemo

JGreyNemo — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 15:59:30 -0800

What do beavers eat?

By: togdon

togdon — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 16:02:47 -0800

Who is president? (Um... OK... Also see Who is secretary general?) Try to be more specific... Who is president of the usa? and Who is secretary general of the un?

By: davejay

davejay — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 16:07:24 -0800

What is the point of this? and Why should I use this instead of Ask Jeeves? I guess they don't know, either

By: MaxVonCretin

MaxVonCretin — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 16:08:15 -0800

It works for Jason and not Matt? Aghhhh. Indeed. Clearly Matt had better follow this Jason Kottke's lead and get busy writing his autobiographical Wikipedia entry in the royal narcissistic third person! I mean come on.

By: togdon

togdon — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 16:09:57 -0800

Unless, of course you meant Who is president of Kyrgyzstan?, or perhaps Iraq, which are a bit more difficult to answer it seems... ;)

By: cedar

cedar — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 16:16:14 -0800

All this technology and I still don't know where my pager is. Google didn't know either.

By: DevilsAdvocate

DevilsAdvocate — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 16:16:45 -0800

Failed on my first attempt, How many movies did Alfred Hitchcock direct?

By: MarvinTheCat

MarvinTheCat — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 16:21:38 -0800

When was Google founded?
Nada. Who founded Google?
Zip. What is Google?
Zilch. Apparently they don't consider themselves celebrities.

By: grateful

grateful — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 16:27:19 -0800

Who is god? posted by goethean at 3:04 PM PST on April 7 [!] Clapton, of course. Must be borken.

By: muckster

muckster — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 16:27:50 -0800

Pretty good: Who shot John F. Kennedy? Not so good: How many fibers are intertwined in a shredded wheat biscuit? What does touche-et-eh-lay-pooh mean? How many times did the Batmobile catch a flat?

By: I EAT TAPES

I EAT TAPES — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 16:32:21 -0800

What is the meaning of life?

By: LionIndex

LionIndex — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 16:43:48 -0800

Who put the bop in the bop-shoo-bop-shoo-bop?

By: weapons-grade pandemonium

weapons-grade pandemonium — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 16:47:02 -0800

Google says:"Who" (etc.) is a very common word and was not included in your search, but you'll get slightly different results if you search without the "Who". So Google uses the "Who" for the question search algorithm, but doesn't bring it up in the results.

By: poppo

poppo — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 16:52:53 -0800

It will even spoil movies for you: Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

By: NewBornHippy

NewBornHippy — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 16:58:17 -0800

Who is the Miserable Failure. (Like we didn't know already -- Carter comes close second. Ha.)

By: chipr

chipr — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 17:06:04 -0800

What is the answer to life, the universe, and everything?

By: thomcatspike

thomcatspike — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 17:08:40 -0800

What is Google? Zilch. It gave a web specific definition, the picture of the dictionary, unlike, Who put the bop in the bop-shoo-bop-shoo-bop? It threw me too when I first tried it. Seeing property or the picture of the dictionary was when I knew it was working for a search.

By: Boydrop

Boydrop — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 17:18:08 -0800

Who Shot JR? Nothing, and good thing - I'm only on season two of the series!

By: Heywood Mogroot

Heywood Mogroot — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 17:18:44 -0800

This is the primary future of IT. Well it was supposed to be in the 80s that AI took off, but I can't see why the best & brightest won't be able to adequately solve the problem of language < -> machine < -> knowledge in the next 10-20 years. TBL is working on that 'semantic web' idea, it's a start but I think the good folks at google or Microsoft Research are going to be able to develop a clustering/automatic approach to it. Truly a fascinating field, wish I could go back to school and get my MS/PhD in this. So very challenging, yet the payoffs are more immense than even the web IMV.

By: thomcatspike

thomcatspike — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 17:20:11 -0800

the picture of the dictionary Wait, maybe I miss-interrupted the dictionary icon wrong as being Google's answer. I just noticed it lately when asking Google a question and the search finding the question's answer.

By: jonp72

jonp72 — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 17:28:36 -0800

What's the frequency, Kenneth?

By: alms

alms — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 17:32:27 -0800

Reminds me of Cyc but it does something potentially useful.

By: fatllama

fatllama — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 17:43:51 -0800

Apparently this has nothing to do with the price of rice in China.

By: muckster

muckster — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 18:03:18 -0800

Was the Pope Catholic?

By: BoringPostcards

BoringPostcards — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 18:08:29 -0800

What is the meaning of life? Kudos for the Monty Python reference high in the results, but overall, a failing grade for not answering "42."

By: underer

underer — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 18:22:01 -0800

Who is a link whoring pinhead?

By: frecklefaerie

frecklefaerie — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 18:24:22 -0800

Wendell, how could you ask about Jeeves without asking, "Is Jeeves gay?"

By: robhuddles

robhuddles — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 19:01:11 -0800

BoringPostcards, you have your pop references wrong. 42 isn't the meaning of life. Check chipr's post. However, I love that the answer to life, the universe and everything actually uses the Google calculator, not the new answer thing. Another Google-related question it doesn't know the answer to: What will Google come up with next to waste time? A fairly easy one it should have come up with, but didn't: Why is the sky blue? It does, however, know who's your daddy.

By: scottreynen

scottreynen — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 19:42:08 -0800

when was jesus born?

By: grateful

grateful — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 19:43:44 -0800

how many roads must a man walk down? Nope. Couldn't tellya.

By: unsupervised

unsupervised — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 20:53:54 -0800

What's a metaphor? Doesn't return "Grazing sheep." BoringPostcards: Try asking The Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything.

By: crunchland

crunchland — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 21:01:31 -0800

With apologies to Irving Berlin and Ella Fitzgerald ... How can I tell you what is in my heart? How can I measure each and every part? How can I tell you how much I love you? How can I measure just how much I do? How much do I love you? I'll tell you no lie How deep is the ocean? How high is the sky? How many times a day do I think of you? How many roses are sprinkled with dew? How far would I travel To be where you are? How far is the journey From here to a star? And if I ever lost you How much would I cry? How deep is the ocean? How high is the sky? It couldn't answer a single question. Not even the less nebulous ones.

By: ouchitburns

ouchitburns — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 21:10:22 -0800

It doesn't work on google.ca, where I am, by default, sent. I wonder why not?

By: aws17576

aws17576 — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 21:30:24 -0800

I wouldn't be surprised if Google got a lot of "questions," written in grammatical English and all, before this feature was added. There are still a lot of people who think computers are magic, or at least don't know how else to treat them. ... and, thanks to Google, it's beginning to look like they have the right idea. My findings: Google can tell you who got the Oscar, but it can't tell you how to mix a drink (and a fairly obvious one at that). See, it should ask me, so it'll know next time! I asked what time it is. No answer, but a News result informed me that the U. S. Congress is considering extending daylight savings time a month in either direction, as a conservation policy. I expect this to start happening every year or so -- we'll make the sun shine at ten minutes to midnight... Oh, and Feelings people get.

By: dirtynumbangelboy

dirtynumbangelboy — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 21:37:20 -0800

Uh, the airspeed of a swallow thing works for me..

By: PlanoTX

PlanoTX — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 21:44:22 -0800

Try this one: What search engines are better than Google?" Four million hits, but the results on the top on the first page are excellent. Even a news result: "Better Desktop Search Arrives - Forbes - Apr 6, 2005". Then look at the image hits. The graph for hit #2 is now outdated, but is relevant to the question if asked two years ago.

By: Pigpen

Pigpen — Fri, 08 Apr 2005 03:05:25 -0800

ouchitburns, me neither for a lot of these - I'm in New Zealand and usually redirected to google.co.nz which only returns standard results. But for some of these posted searches (e.g. What atomic number is boron?, Where is the grand canyon?) I stay on google.com and can view the answers. I'm not sure what factor in these searches determines google.com/google.co.nz.

By: Orange Goblin

Orange Goblin — Fri, 08 Apr 2005 04:06:10 -0800

I keep getting redirected to google.co.uk and not getting any answers. How do I get Google to stop deciding what I want to look at for me?

By: debralee

debralee — Fri, 08 Apr 2005 08:10:01 -0800

Would you like fries with that?

By: notbuddha

notbuddha — Fri, 08 Apr 2005 08:13:50 -0800

This one is bound to tick some people off: Who is the Madonna?

By: crunchland

crunchland — Fri, 08 Apr 2005 08:16:33 -0800

I wonder if you used an american proxy server, like Anonymizer.net, Orange Goblin?

By: COBRA!

COBRA! — Fri, 08 Apr 2005 08:24:18 -0800

Ayn Rand would be pissed: Who is John Galt?

By: TheDonF

TheDonF — Fri, 08 Apr 2005 09:33:27 -0800

According to Inside Google, MSN and Jeeves have had this feature for a while; they're just playing catch up with the others.