If not, you probably will soon as it supposedly goes live this weekend. Its being dubbed as an "answer engine" rather than a search engine. The key points that I find most interesting about WolframAlpha are:
- WolframAlpha answers questions rather than display a list of matching results. This is its strength and its limitation. It doesn't have thousands of terrabytes of data powering it as does Google.
- WolframAlpha may be the most visible foray to date into the world of the "semantic web" or Web 3.0. The semantic web is still a fuzzy concept and this may bring it into more focus.
- Google co-founder Sergey Brin once spent a
summer interning for Wolfram, the creator of WolframAlpha, prompting speculation that the two could team up one day boosting Google's capability as a search and answer engine.
As with most new search engines. many enjoy a lot of launch hype and are called the "Google Killer". This one is no exception. Clearly this type of technology has its place in the search world and with WolframAlpha, I see the industry (along with Twitter Search) evolving still and putting ever more pressure on big G. A good summary article describing WolframAlpha is on MediaPost by Laurie Sullivan - "A Wolf in Google's Killer Clothing"
