Maybe I’m being a bit unfair, but the way the press is hyping it as a potential “Google/Wikipedia Killer” really doesn’t do it any favors. The site itself doesn’t say it’s a search engine, it describes itself as a “computational knowledge engine”. You’re supposed to enter a question or calculation and it will give you a result in the areas of mathematics, engineering, physics, places & geography, etc.

So first test is, can WolframAlpha tell us what a “computational knowledge engine” is?

Question: What is a computational knowledge engine?

WolframAlpha: Wolfram|Alpha isn’t sure what to do with  your input.
Google: Top link is a blog entry titled “So what exactly IS a computational knowledge engine?”

Hum … not a good start. Also, Google’s second link is a link to WolframAlpha itself. Well, it says Wolfram Alpha is also good for business queries. Let’s find out information about a company.

Question: Who is the CEO of Apple?

WolframAlpha: Wolfram “assumes” I’m talking about CNOOC Limited, whose stock symbol is CEO. So the result is some financial information about CNOOC and Apple. Not what I was looking for.
Google: First link is Apple’s bio page on Steve Jobs.

Google wins again. Let’s look at historical figures.

Question: Who is Martin Luther King?

WolframAlpha: First accurate answer we get! WolframAlpha provides us minimal information about Martin Luther King Jr. It provides his full name, dates of birth and death and even the place of death. We also get a nifty time line, showing that last piece of information in graphical form (Which would only be useful if we were comparing events). Note that it also shows a “related links” which links to the Wikipedia entry on Martin Luther King Jr. which actually has a lot more information of course.
Google: First link is the Wikipedia entry that WolframAlpha also linked to. However the next link is a biography from the Nobel prize website and we also get a couple of YouTube links on the “I have a dream speech” and other moments.

This is kind of a tie I guess. WolframAlpha gives you minimal information, but it’s nicely summarized yet horribly incomplete. However, you get the Wikipedia entry to get more background information. Google gives you more results, but doesn’t give you a concise summary right there on the results about Martin Luther King Jr. like Wolfram does.

Let’s ask mathematical questions, this is where WolframAlpha is supposed to excel.

Question: What is an inductive proof?

WolframAlpha: Wolfram|Alpha isn’t sure what to do with your input.
Google:  Results are really good; Mathematical induction – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, Induction Proofs: Introduction, Mathematical Induction, etc.

Question: sin(1) + cos(1)

WolframAlpha: We get lots of results, plots, alternate forms, roots and the decimal approximation to a ridiculous level of decimal places 0.4546487134128…..
Google: sin(1) * cos(1) = 0.454648713

Question: x + 250 = 15

WolframAlpha: We get “x = -235″ and get a plot for the equation.
Google: Doesn’t understand simple algebra equations and returns garbage.

And we can go on. Clearly you can see WolframAlpha is not really a search engine at all. You won’t find news, websites or most of your search related queries here. When it comes to basic definitions and parsing common language questions; WolframAlpha seems pretty dumb so far. Even in the area of mathematics, it won’t give you definitions for some common concepts. I also tried some Computer Science concepts and it had trouble too.

This “computational engine” is more apt for actual computational tasks. You want to solve some mathematical problem (say determine if a number is a prime number, equations, trigonometry, etc) or have it expressed in different ways (alternate forms and representations) and this engine will help a lot. But for your more common task for searching for general information and items with in depth explanation of concepts and places, you are still better off using Google in conjunction with Wikipedia.

Hopefully people will realize this and tone down the hype, Google and Wikipedia are not threatened by this engine at all. Although I do think that Wolfram Alpha might cause Google to invest a bit more in it’s mathematical calculation engine which currently pretty much functions as a very simple web enabled pocket calculator.

One last note: For some reason Wolfram Alpha returns results as images … even simple textual information. I don’t know why they do this at all. For example in my search for Martin Luther King, if I wanted to copy his name or date of birth, you get a little annoying dialog with the actual text so you can copy it. You can’t use the normal method of highlighting the information you want right there on the page. Very annoying and I hope they reconsider this dreadful “feature”.