If you haven't heard of the new search engine Wolfram Alpha yet, you should check it out. You're probably thinking, "Google's the best search engine there is, why would I try a different one?". Well, because they're different. While Google returns various links to blogs and websites that are often irrelevant, useless or spam, Alpha relies on data straight from government and public databases and utilizes a staff of a few hundred people to organize and coordinate replies to questions in the format you're looking for rather than linking you to the top ranked site that has a lock on a particular keyword.

Some Examples

A favorite of mine was the stock comparison. By doing the "IBM APPL" example, you get immediate calculations that I used to have to do myself manually in a spreadsheet in my MBA days. Having expected return, volatility, correlation coefficients, etc. at your fingertips in one shot was quite impressive.



If you try out "$75,000" per year, it returns a breakdown in dollars per hr, etc. as well as the equivalent in multiple foreign currencies. So, this would be quicker than me going to Google and finding a currency calculator, then entering the $75,000, then selecting the to/from currencies and retrieving an answer.



If you're helping your kid out with their science project and type in "Saturn" in Google, you'll end up on the home page of another unsuccessful franchise under General Motors. In Alpha, you get all the requisite measures and data on the planet Saturn.



Room for Improvement

In trying it out today, I found the load speed to be excruciatingly slow, even to get to the home page. I hope that improves or I can't bear it any more. Aside from that, it's a pretty neat alternative to Google, which is still far from perfect. I was also underwhelmed by a few scientific-type searches that didn't turn up anything useful. I would envision that if they get enough useful data in the system and enough momentum behind usage (and eventually find a way to monetize), the engine could be a decent alternative to traditional search engines that bring you results by content and inbound links.


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