Google Killer? - Page 5

I asked Wolfram if he was thinking in terms of selling off Wolfram|Alpha to a big company like Google. “I’m not a selling things kind of guy,” he said firmly. He sees his new program as a long-term project whose development he wants to guide. “We’d rather look for things like partnerships or licensing deals or APIs. I see a new field of knowledge-based computing. Imagine a spread sheet that can pull in knowledge about the entries.”

As Wolfram|Alpha comes into widespread use, Stephen believes “It will raise the level of scientific things that the average person can do. People will find that the world is more predictable than they might have expected. Just as running Google is like having a reference librarian to help you, running Wolfram|Alpha will be like having a house scientist to consult for you.”

Kicking off our conversation, Stephen remarks that, “Wolfram|Alpha isn’t really a search engine, because we compute the answers, and we discover new truths. If anything, you might call it a platonic search engine, unearthing eternal truths that may never have been written down before.”

Despite his disclaimer, Wolfram|Alpha looks like a search engine, in that there’s a one-line box where you type in a question. The output appears a second or two later, as a page of text and graphics below the box. What's happening behind the scenes? Rather than looking up the answer to your question, Wolfram|Alpha figures out what your question means, looks up the necessary data to answer your question, computes an answer, designs a page to present the answer in a pleasing way, and sends the page back to your computer.

Let me give three random examples. If you enter the query, “3/26/2009 + 90 days” you’ll get a page that gives a date ninety days later than the first date. If you enter “mt. everest height length of golden gate” you’ll get a page expressing the height of Mount Everest as a multiple of the length of the Golden Gate Bridge. If you enter “temperature in los gatos,” you’ll get something like the current temperature, a graph of the temperatures over the last week with projections for the next few days, and a graph of the temperatures over the last year.

On April 14 2009 07:55 paper wrote:
so wolfram is basically wikipedia

...

On April 10 2009 14:14 JeeJee wrote:
yeah here are some other google killers
http://www.answers.com/bb/
http://www.icerocket.com/
http://www.cuil.com/

bet you never heard of any of them either
(to be fair, some of those are actually good. cuil was made by ex-googlers for example, is really fast and gives great results. plus it has that whole slickness going for it, just like google. but you still haven't heard of it.)

On April 10 2009 14:02 iSCOUT4u wrote:
I hope google dies...im really getting tired of hearing "google it" i hate that ppl go with whatever is newer...even if it isnt better. This thing seems like an awesome tool though

On April 14 2009 12:44 ShinyGerbil wrote:
now i'm just wondering who will be the first to create www.letmewolframalphathatforyou.com

On April 12 2009 17:36 jodogohoo wrote:

if wolfram kills google, im holding you responsible.