Greetings. By now, you may (or may not) have heard the buzz surrounding a new "computational knowledge engine" called Wolfram|Alpha (henceforth, "WA") that is about to launch.

There's been a lot of discussion about this project, including this interesting analysis of its capabilities, privacy concerns, and other related discussion by Andy Oram.

The big question floating around seems to be, is WA a "Google Killer"?

Load scaling issues aside for the moment, the answer for now at least would appear to be no -- the primary purposes of WA and Google seem to be very different.

WA is oriented toward trying to provide the answer (with sources noted) to direct questions like "What is the population density of Paris, France?" -- with the additional capability of "comparing and contrasting" various data in flexible ways.

In essence, if you asked Google how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, Google would return an array of references discussing this critical issue.

WA, on the other hand, if asked the same question, would presumably try to tell you exactly how many angels could be stuffed onto that small surface area.

That's a facetious example of course -- while Google could indeed handle that question, it's not the sort of query you'd reasonably make of WA.

But this does bring up a key issue -- what are the relative benefits of being shown a range of query results relating to a question, vs. a single answer presented as authoritative?

By and large, Google and Wolfram|Alpha are operating with very different information space points of view.

I'd be remiss if didn't note some concerns about Wolfram|Alpha's name. Branding these days is very important, and Wolfram|Alpha sounds more like a fictional planet from the Aliens movie franchise than an Internet service. Worse still, there's even confusion about that "|" in the name. Officially it apparently is supposed to be in there, but many articles are leaving it out -- in fact it's left out in key places on their own site as well!

Let's face it, Wolfram|Alpha just doesn't roll off the tongue in a Googley way, and as we know from the Castle Anthrax in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, names do matter!

It will be interesting to see how Wolfram|Alpha develops, along with similar technologies that we can expect to see deployed elsewhere.

But it appears that the secret demographics of pinhead-dwelling angels remain secure for the time being.

--Lauren--