The Future of Search: How Wolfram|Alpha Will Change the Dynamic from Search Engines to Answer Engines

In March 2009, Wolfram announced Wolfram|Alpha, a computational data engine with a new approach to knowledge extraction and an easy-to-use interface, to be launched in May 2009. The engine is based on natural language processing, a large library of algorithms and a “New Kind of Science” (NKS) approach to answering queries. The Wolfram|Alpha engine differs from traditional search engines in that it does not simply return a list of results based on a query, but instead computes an answer.

Wolfram and his team have built what he calls a "computational knowledge engine" for the Web, meaning that you can ask it factual questions and it computes answers for you. It doesn't simply return documents that (might) contain the answers, like Google does, and it isn't just a giant database of knowledge, like the Wikipedia. It doesn't simply parse natural language and then use that to retrieve documents, like Powerset, for example. Instead, Wolfram|Alpha actually computes the answers to a wide range of questions -- like questions that have factual answers such as "What is the location of Timbuktu?" or "How many protons are in a hydrogen atom?," "What was the average rainfall in Boston last year?," "What is the 307th digit of Pi?," or "what would 80/20 vision look like?"

Wolfram says Wolfram|Alpha is not meant to compete with Google, but Google on the other hand, is now moving forward with plans to help it become more of an “answer engine.” 

In his annual “Founders’ Letter,” Sergey Brin, Google co-founder and president, says although he is proud of what has been accomplished in search over the past decade, there are important areas, namely in the areas of human-level artificial intelligence, in which he wishes they had made more progress. 

In this vein, Google has announced a number of new features designed to make Google search results a little more interactive. Google Squared is a new program that will cull numerical data from searches of Web sites to create customized tables in response to a user’s query. For instance, a search for the term “small dogs” might create a table organizing data about various breeds of small dogs on which searchers can click to drill for deeper information specific to their search. 

Other new Google features being launched include an icon that allows searchers to choose “options” for the type of results they wish to get in response to a search. These options could include videos, forums, blogs, reviews, timeframe, etc. Among other features, Google is also trying to provide better real-time results and provisions for misspelled words in searches.   

For more details on Wolfram|Alpha visit: Twine.com http://www.twine.com/item/122mz8lz9-4c/wolfram-alpha-is-coming-and-it-could-be-as-important-as-google

 

Or see the article posted on ZDNet.com:

 

For more news on Google Squared see the story in MIT’s Technology Review