Why Wolfram Alpha, the new "search" engine, is worth looking at

Is it possible to have a conversation with the World Wide Web, to be able to ask it a question and receive an answer? Currently, using a search engine is almost like asking a question and then receiving a membership to a library – browse a couple of books, read a few pages and eventually you get the required information. Wolfram Alpha could be the answer to this question.

The first place I go to for research, or to get an answer, is a search engine. Google is my search engine of choice. I sometimes rely on a combination of results from Google, Yahoo and MSN. So, what makes Wolfram Alpha different?

Wolfram Alpha is not a search engine, it is an answer engine. An answer engine is an online service that answers factual queries directly by computing the answer from structured data, rather than providing a list of documents or web pages that might contain the answer - like a search engine does.

Will it take over the world or Google? No, I think that Wolfram Alpha is like a mash-up of Google and Wikipedia. It complements the Google and Wikipedia offerings. I wouldn’t be surprised if the service is eventually purchased by an online heavyweight and then offered as part of their product portfolio.

I am looking forward to experiencing the full potential that Wolfram Alpha has to offer and I hope that it achieves a similar adoption rate to Google and Wikipedia.