[fb]

Impressive technology, BUT... I've just tried Wolfram Alpha with a preview account, and I have to express my complete disappointment. It seems to me that Wolfram Alpha is a classic example of geeks building application that is useful for them but that is irrelevant to the other 99% of the world. And that 99% are the buying customers. I tried some usual web search phrases, and for each of them "Wolfram wasn't sure what to do with my data". It even suggested some alternative searches, but when I clicked, it still wasn't sure. Of course, it was happy to analyse some sinus function for me, but imagine how many people would like that? In my opinion, Wolfram will be an excellent niche search engine for mathematicians, statisticians, and the geeks alike, but nothing near Google in any respect.

[rgoddard]

This and Google are serving two different purposes. Google is an interface to search the web. Wolfram Alpha is an interface to search their own database of facts and relationships. When you use Wolfram Alpha you are doing a fact search, not a web search.

[ntoshev]

The economic and financial data alone will give Wolfram more paying customers than he can support. Just think about Bloomberg.