Wolfram Alpha will compute answers, could challenge Google
A new search engine based on computational answers rather than a list of static results launches in May 2009 to challenge Google.
Right now, visiting WolframAlpha gives you little more than a search box and notice that the site is launching in May 2009. However, there's quite a bit of buzz surrounding this forthcoming "computational knowledge engine" thanks to a post by Twine.com's Nova Spivack, who noted on Saturday that this new site "could be as important as Google." Google revolutionized the Internet by not only making a large portion of the information online searchable, but by actually making it findable. One can find results for very specific things by typing in a combination of keywords in Google. Google then displays a list of the closes matches to your keywords from a list of webpages that it has crawled in the past and which appear in its vast indexes. This is definitely an impressive feat, and Google has large computational data centers devoted to simply finding the information they've indexed in the past so that your search for "best pizza in Seattle" comes back with a relevant set of results.
What WolframAlpha will do, however, according to Spivack and Stephen Wolfram himself, is something quite different. Rather than finding and returning possible results from its data centers, WolframAlpha will actually attempt to curate all the data collected from the various webpages out there and make them computational. Instead of searching for something on WolframAlpha and receiving a set of results you must then read through to find the answer to the question you really have, as you currently do with Google, you will go to WolframAlpha and type in your actual question, and the site aims to compute an answer to your query based on the information contained in the results a normal search engine would return. Whether it will work remains to be seen, but Spivack was definitely impressed by the preview that he received of the site and a lot of people are talking about it. We've asked for early access and we'll make sure to let you know what we think once the service is available and we've had a chance to test it out, so stay tuned.
This story around the web:
- Trusted sources:
Wolfram|Alpha [wolframalpha.com]
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Wolfram Blog : Wolfram|Alpha Is Coming! [blog.wolfram.com]
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Wolfram Alpha is Coming -- and It Could be as… [Delicious popular tech]
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Wolfram Alpha is Coming - and It Could be as… [Techmeme]
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Wolfram Alpha is Coming -- and It Could be as… [Megite Technology News: What's Happening Right Now]
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Wolfram Alpha: The next major search… [CNET News.com]
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Wolfram Alpha: The next major search… [Megite Technology News: What's Happening Right Now]
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Wolfram Alpha: The next major search… [eCoustics]
Get more information on topics relating to this story:
- Related company news:
- Wolfram Alpha LLC
- Related glossary terms:
- Alpha
- Related devices and services:
- Google, WolframAlpha
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Comments (2)
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Mat Bitner (12:22 PM on Mon Mar 9, 2009)
Come on C.K., really? Can ANYTHING challenge google? We've all heard and seen a number of search engines saying the same thing, and the result is the same. We forget about them. There was that one that was started by that person who used to work for google or something and said that their new search would be way better than google. The main problem is that none of them have lasting power. People use google because it just works. It may not work as well as a dozen other search engines, but that's no the point, the point is that google just works.
C.K. Sample III
(3:25 PM on Mon Mar 9, 2009)
Yahoo used to be the Google of the internet. Google supplanted them. It's not too outrageous an idea.