This month sees the launch of Wolfram Alpha, the much talked about search engine created by Stephen Wolfram. Forget the fact that naming the engine after one self may constitute as a glorious vanity project. No, this baby looks serious with a hefty engine under the bonnet. Other search engines have tried and failed to dismount the oversized mammoth that is Google (Cuil anyone?) but WA has a chance to take a slice of the search pie from Yahoo! at least. Here’s why: its much hyped computional engine. WA essentially runs on big server technology sucking up all the data it can get its hands on via your website. Algorithms sift and filter this mass of info but not just a few. The blog states that tens of thousands of algorithms could be at work to get the information you need. A much detailed explanation can be found here.

However, the crux of the matter would be not necessaryily the relevancy of searches generated. Google’s initial popularity was helped by its simplicity over its rival, Yahoo!. Usability and to some degree how it spread by word-of-mouth would be  defining factors on the success of Wolfram Alpha. I don’t think your Paris Hilton’s of the world would be much interested in ‘mathematica’ or its ‘world class algorithm’ if it works like a dog and doesn’t offer the simplicity of Google.

I’ll be watching this one closely and hopefully it wouldn’t fall over on launch.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 at 2:13 pm and is filed under Search. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.