前几天,Google管Search的老大Matts Cutts接受ReadWrite Web的访问,在谈到语义识别在下一代互联网中的应用是,他是这么说的:
Richard: What do you think about semantic technologies (like for example Hakia)? How important is natural language understanding for search and is Google doing anything in this direction?
Matt: We do pay a lot of attention to a lot of different technologies, so I would define Google's approach as very pragmatic. And we keep an eye on the entire space and we try to say, ‘ok what are the areas that are most promising for users?’ Historically it's always interesting to view the progress of semantic technologies. For example if you do a search like: 'how many states are in America?'. Some search engines that claim to be semantic won't do a good job in delivering the right results, whereas Google can do a very good job - even if you think, ‘ok how can they handle natural language, or how can they handle the semantics of that search.’ And I think what Google benefits from is the sheer size of the Web and the sheer amount of data, and it really does help us understand the meanings of words and synonyms. So we do have a pragmatic approach and we don't necessarily place all our bets on one particular way of doing things. We are exploring a lot of different things all at once.
红字那部分,大概是这么说的,“举例来讲,如果你搜索‘美国有多少个州’,有些号称可以处理语义的搜索引擎返回的结果并不好,然而Google却可以做得很棒,即便你会想,‘他们是如何处理自然语言的,或者他们是如果处理搜索语义的呢?’
结果,有人真的做了这个实验,把"how many states are in Aemerica"作为搜索关键字,下面是Google和Windows Live Search得到的结果:
这样鲜明的对比,让我不禁想起,当年百度的那个广告,“我知道你不知道我知道你不知道我知道你不知道”。