After reading Ericks’ article and comments on how Google will crush Wolfram|Alpha I thought it would be good to summmarise the discussion as there seem to be a lot of confusion what Wolfram|Alpha is/isn’t.
See the differences in the table below and feel free to adda comment if you think I missed anything.
At the same time I have to say I’m very excited about the Wolfram|Alpha project and I wish it had been available few years ago when I was still at the uni.
| Title |  |
 |
|---|---|---|
| Search Engine | Yes – google is indexing the web and returning list of pages | No – it generates output by doing computations from its own internal knowledge base |
| Free | Yes | Yes, free for personal noncommercial use |
| Audience | Mainstream audience, thanks to its simplicity | Everyone, but given its complexity and it will attract mainly academic audience |
| Link with information source | connects users with information source | connects users with information |
| Database updates | real-time dependent on the indexing frequency | potentially real-time subject to manual data input and approval |
| Typical queries | general interest, shopping | scientific, academic |
| Business model | Mainly Pay Per Click contextual ads | Paid subscriptions with enhanced features for large-scale and commercial use and business partnerships |
| Fundations | 1995: Based on a search engine called BackRub, BackRub operated on Stanford servers from 1995 | 1988: Wolfram|Alpha is built on the Wolfram Mathematica system, which has been in continual development since 1988 |
| Languages | 41 | English only |
| Limitations | authority based on PageRank, lack of common data structure | Wolfram|Alpha can only know things that are known, and are somehow public. It only deals with facts, not opinions |
| Key strenghts | Simplicity and a wide range of knowledge/data | computation and mathematics |
| Data checks | Mainly automated and managed by Google spam team. But, given its mainstream audience highly affected by spam | Automated and manual, including exper review. Less likely to be targeted by spammers |
| Data upload | No – data needs to be published on the web | Yes – submission process sumilar to wikipedia |
| Private personal information | Yes | No. It contains only information that is considered public. |
| Adult content | Yes, particularly when SafeSearch Filtering is off | No. It has no adult images or narrative. It gives only factual answers to factual questions. |
Conclusion
Many similarities but they are two completely different tools – targeting different audience.
I think Wolfram|Alpha has its right to exist as a niche and reliable tool for research and I’m sure there are businesses who will pay for additional features. What do you think?