Wolframalpha.com Officially Launches – not a Google Killer, sadly

Wolfram Alpha is a search engine that you can use to compute systematic knowledge immediately. You can put in anything you would like to know and you can compare multiple results with each other. There is no need to know how to search; just type in what you want to know. – from CrunchGear

Wolfram/Alpha has launched, but after a few searches it’s an open question whether the search engine can break out of a narrow niche for select users. For many searches Wolfram/Alpha just “isn’t sure what to do with your input.” Wolfram/Alpha got rolling over the weekend in preparation for a full scale launch on Monday (Techmeme). If Wolfram/Alpha is really supposed to understand me it will need to figure out terms like “Delaware tax system” and not try to steer me to geography or city data. – from ZDNet

WolframAlpha will tell you – without making you comb through links as a search engine would. It also will graphically illustrate answers when merited. So if you query “GDP Spain Canada” you’d see a chart indicating that Spain’s economy was smaller than Canada’s most of the time since 1970 and recently pulled ahead. That’s pretty clever. – from New Zealand

Wolfram Alpha is not a regular search engine. It doesn’t scour the Web for data to return the best results. Rather, it ingests data into its own massive databases so that it can run the information through its own constantly-growing set of algorithms to “compute” the answers. These algorithms are based on computer scientist Stephen Wolfram’s Mathematicasoftware. When it does come up with an answer, it can be brilliant. Scientists, engineers, and math geeks are going to love Wolfram Alpha. It can do calculus, regression analysis, compute orbital paths and fluid dynamics, and call up detailed information about specific genes. But too often it doesn’t have the best answers for basic questions and searches. – from Techcrunch

But even if Stephen Wolfram’s search calculator can compete with Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s search index, can his business model? Google generated $21 billion in revenues last year, 99% of which came from advertising.
According to Wolfram Alpha, that’s more than $3 per person alive today. It would be more than foolish to assume Wolfram Research can monetize Wolfram Alpha in the way Google has monetized its search engine through its lucrative paid search business. After all, the search index is only one of two inventions that made Google what it is today. The other was AdSense, the self-service advertising platform that allows businesses to buy clicks from Google users. – from Forbes

Amid a flurry of Internet search developments by other companies recently, Google today sought to demonstrate that it’s not ceding any leadership in the Internet’s most valuable territory. At the company’s Searchology event at its Mountain View headquarters, Google announced several new and upcoming features that indicate neither Twitter nor WolframAlpha nor Microsoft is easily going to vault past Google. The overall goal, according to Udi Manber, Google’s vice president of engineering for core search, is for Google search to understand people and what they mean. – from Business Week