Wikinerd'z

From CodeLemur

[...]

• Google is obviously the 900-pound gorilla in this space, so they’re a logical place to start. When you ask Google “How big is the Sun?” Big Brother Google replies, right at the top “Mass: 1.9891 ×1030 KG 332 946 Earths,” with most of the results relevant to the question at hand. In fact, all but two of the results were directly relevant to the question asked.
• Yahoo didn’t return a nice little piece of math like Google did, but all but one of the search results is directly relevant to the question asked. The only result that wasn’t relevant was that VH1 has some videos by a band called Big Sun, but that was torwards the bottom of the SERP.
• The newcomer Wolfram Alpha, which bills itself as a “knowledge engine” gives you a simple result, 432,200 miles, along with a handy formula for conversion. Not a traditional search engine, but closer to a “decision engine” than Bing …
• And finally, the “decision engine” Bing. So how does the vaunted “decision engine” handle knowing how big the sun is? It doesn’t.

  The first result is a garden furniture store in Austin, Texas. The second result is an Equine Product Store in Florida. The third was pictures of the sun from the Boston Globe – okay, that one was close. The next results are a realty company in Florida and an athletic conference. Only then, six results down, do we get into the meat of the question.

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With these observations and my experience I must say, I concur with Lemur that Bing doesn’t provide anything useful. I can’t help but draw the premature conclusion that they spent more money advertising it than developing it.