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Clever presentation, but a weak database: The
soon-to-be-launched Wolfram Alpha search engine is already being touted
as the "Google killer." German news website Spiegel Online has tested a preliminary
version. The conclusion: It knows a lot about aspirin, a little about
culture - and it thinks German Chancellor Angela Merkel's political
party is an airport.
Wolfram Alpha is not a "Google killer." Nor is it, in fact, a search
engine. Instead, it is a "computational knowledge engine," says Stephen
Wolfram, inventor of the new online service. He proudly describes his
creation as "a new paradigm for the use of computers and the Web." His
goal is to finally make good on the promise that computer pioneers made
in the 1950s: to make computers that can come up with their own answers
to questions.
Wolfram, a physicist, certainly seems to have the background needed for
such a task. He invented the "Mathematica" software package, a
universal problem solver for mathematical questions of all kinds,
especially those that statisticians, scientists and mathematicians
pose. And since the program requires so much processing power, some
computer magazines even use it to test the capacity and performance of
PCs.
Now Wolfram wants to revolutionize the way we search for answers
online. The Wolfram Alpha "answer machine" is meant to show us how to
get there by doing much the same thing as Google - only better. Well,
at least in theory.
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