Wolfram alpha – a computational “Answer” engine was launched on May 15, 2009. Named after the creator, British physicist Stephen Wolfram, the answer engine has created more than a few ripples in the Internet enthusiasts since its launch. This article is perhaps among the first articles, if not the first, on any Indian blog about what might well be the future of search.

So, what makes Wolframalpha special?  To quote the founder Mr. Wolfram himself, this isn’t a search engine but a ‘Computational Knowledge Engine’. While the Google fanatics may call this an attempt NOT to attract competition from the Mountain view based firm, perhaps this may also indicate a different approach to search as well. Clearly, Wolfram alpha is trying answer the search query on its site itself, rather than give links and pageranks of webpages which may contain answers to the query. This is perhaps a very fundamental difference, and well in line with what Mr. Wolfram said about the universe – The entire universe is giant calculator running for billions of years.

The economist, in this article summarizes the concept behind Wolfram Alpha beautifully,

Alpha, in short, acts like a nerdy reference librarian who is equipped with the latest calculators and endless stacks of books and encyclopedias. Hit upon the right subject and it will excel at calculating airflow around a surface, showing the distribution patterns for DNA base pairs in human genes, spitting out prime numbers or computing and comparing crucial statistics for various national economies. Yet simple queries such as “climate change” or “Gordon Brown” will yield the equivalent of an empty stare.The engine actually works by applying code used in Mathematica (a set of mathematical tools used to perform elaborate calculations, solve equations and build models) to a vast store of curated data that a team of around 200 experts working under Dr Wolfram’s direction has amassed, scanned, processed and correlated over the past couple of years. So far, he says, his repository contains between 10 billion and 20 billion elements of data.

Now, let us look at this in the context of search engines .As written by Atul in a previous article about the future of search engines, Google commands a huge 70% market share. Perhaps the approach by Wolfram alpha may change the fundamentals of the search engine market. If wolfram alpha’s approach is to be considered, perhaps, search may become a question-and-answer type of model in future. Something that AskJeeves tried but didn’t succeed at. Right now, there are huge shortcomings of this search engine and it doesn’t even cover 5% of what google covers, but here is someone who has tried a different approach to the search problem. Also, the very fact that Google has launched a new Search technique called Google Sqaured tells us how seriously Google is looking at Wolfram alpha.

Lots of questions remain unanswered -

• Is Wolframalpha’s approach to search sustainable over a longer term? Can any search engine answer all questions of the world?
• Would Google squared make Google a better search engine?
• And finally, the title to Atul’s post – Where are search Engines headed, say 5 years from now?

Clearly, times in the internet world are extremely exciting…

Until the next time, keep ‘strat.in’g!

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