Communications of the ACM
Why Google Will Soon Answer Your Questions Directly
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Google recently launched its "knowledge graph," which displays facts and services in response to search queries.
The graph is the most recent step in a process in which search engines are changing into vast brains that respond directly to natural language questions. Google and Microsoft have been compiling vast knowledge databases to help them provide direct answers to search terms. The databases have been built up from publicly available information, such as Wikipedia pages, as well as prices from retail Web sites and user reviews.
Google's graph contains 500 million entities linked by tens of thousands of different types of relationships, according to Google researcher Shashidhar Thakur. "Search does a good job of returning pages," Thakur says. "But we can go beyond that and return knowledge."
Microsoft's knowledge graph, known as the Satori database, contains 350 million entities, according to Bing Search director Stefan Weitz. Microsoft's Snapshot service will use its knowledge graph to display links to services associated with the search item. Weitz says Snapshot's aim is to guess the real-world action that a user is interested in when they search and to return links that enable them to carry out those actions.
From New Scientist
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