Finally an event in online search that introduces something very different to google. But,the very impressiveness of today’s release, Wolfram Alpha is it is not trying to do what google already does.
Who needs a scientific calculator? You can throw yours away today and calculate any mathematical equation online for free. But that is just the beginning. Let’s suppose you don’t remember a formula. Say for example you wanted to know the area of a circle which was 6cm across. A simple English query and you have your result!
But there is more. Data can be recombined in simple ways and thus for example you can compare the UK and the USA or examine details of the USA birth rate or compare the birth rate per head of population of the USA vs India.
Wolfram Alpha describes their long-term goal as follows:
. . .to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything. Our goal is to build on the achievements of science and other systematizations of knowledge to provide a single source that can be relied on by everyone for definitive answers to factual queries.
Wolfram|Alpha aims to bring expert-level knowledge and capabilities to the broadest possible range of people—spanning all professions and education levels. Our goal is to accept completely free-form input, and to serve as a knowledge engine that generates powerful results and presents them with maximum clarity.
Wolfram|Alpha is an ambitious, long-term intellectual endeavor that we intend will deliver increasing capabilities over the years and decades to come. With a world-class team and participation from top outside experts in countless fields, our goal is to create something that will stand as a major milestone of 21st century intellectual achievement.
That it should be possible to build Wolfram|Alpha as it exists today in the first decade of the 21st century was far from obvious. And yet there is much more to come.
As of now, Wolfram|Alpha contains 10+ trillion of pieces of data, 50,000+ types of algorithms and models, and linguistic capabilities for 1000+ domains. Built with Mathematica—which is itself the result of more than 20 years of development at Wolfram Research—Wolfram|Alpha’s core code base now exceeds 5 million lines of symbolic Mathematica code. Running on supercomputer-class compute clusters, Wolfram|Alpha makes extensive use of the latest generation of web and parallel computing technologies, including webMathematica and gridMathematica
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