496291 - [si] search plugin for the wolframalpha search engine

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Mozilla Localizations :: si / Sinhala, enhancement)

Description

[Danishka]

Can we have a search plugin for wolframalpha [http://www55.wolframalpha.com]
in Firefox Sinhala (si) locale.

Comment 1

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

I'm torn on this one. Wolfram Alpha is really geeky, IMHO.

And according to the report that I read about it, it's really alpha still, too ;-).

That doesn't mean that it's not a cool engine for what it does, http://wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Berlin%2C+Paris for example answers a bunch of questions that I get always asked :-)

Comment 2

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

(In reply to comment #1)
> I'm torn on this one. Wolfram Alpha is really geeky, IMHO.
> 
> And according to the report that I read about it, it's really alpha still, too
> ;-).

Yeah. As cool as it is, it's still a new search engine on the market. It;s probably too early to include them in any of our locales, although it's good to see this kind of innovation on the search market (especially that you can already see its impact on other players: http://www.google.com/squared).

I wonder if we should try to support such initiatives with our productization guidelines. For now, we almost always prefer to choose a market leader, which is a good and safe choice for our users, but it seems that some way of recognizing those noteworthy but not well-known (and sometimes even niche) initiatives like wolframalpha might be sometimes a good thing for the Web.

Just thinking out loud.

Comment 3

[Danishka]

if it not crashing the Friefox and also the community need it what is the point in stoping it for this moment?

if the browser work fine with it, do we need to wait till other browsers moving with it?

>"we almost always prefer to choose a market leader" 
 i am not agree with this..

Mozilla is not the market leader, but people (we) use it..
but you guys looking for market leaders in search engines?

if you want to be the market leader in browser market you should get the all searching engines, etc under mozilla umbrella.

if you still not getting me:

i am talking about sreach pannel on TOP-Right side of the browser and not the defualt search engine of firefox

Comment 4

[Gen Kanai [:gen]]

Danishka, does Wolfram Alpha provide results in Sinhala?  If not then I do not understand the reason to provide it for si locale.

Comment 5

[Danishka]

Gen,

We still use Amazon.com, Answers.com and eBay but all of them in en_US.
We are not restricting English stuff, we replaced en_US search plugins only if we have a localized one such as google.lk and wikipedia-si.

Btw, most of Firefox si users read English content that Sinhala, yes! including me. :)
Coz, we don't have enough Sinhala web content.

Comment 6

[Seth Bindernagel]

This seems way too new to me.  But, without sound arbitrary, I'd like to monitor the progress of this search plugin's metrics on AMO:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/12113

At this link, it appears that the search plugin has only been active for one week.  

(In reply to comment #3)
> >"we almost always prefer to choose a market leader" 
>  i am not agree with this..
> 
> Mozilla is not the market leader, but people (we) use it..
> but you guys looking for market leaders in search engines?
> 
> if you want to be the market leader in browser market you should get the all
> searching engines, etc under mozilla umbrella.
> 
> if you still not getting me:
> 
> i am talking about sreach pannel on TOP-Right side of the browser and not the
> defualt search engine of firefox

We choose search plugins to compliment our industry leading browser.  Wolframalpha shows some interesting potential, but how can we tell?  It's very new and probably needs some time to grow.  Let us allow our users to investigate the service by adding it as a search plugin from AMO.  If after some time, it shows great signs of user adoption, let's revisit this bug to make a decision then.

Comment 7

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

Marking as wontfix for now. This doesn't mean we can't revisit this decision at a later date. I just think that for the time being, wolframalpha is too new on the market to be included in any locale.

Thanks for the suggestion, though. Please keep them coming :)