[antpicnic]

For some queries, Wolfram Alpha is excellent. As mentioned in other comments, Wolfram's marketing sucks not the search engine.

Like all potentially disruptive products, it meets the needs of a particular niche well, For example, try "population density" in W-A and Google. Be sure to click on the "More" links to expand W-A's results. Amazing.

Over time Google may have a problem. I'm using Twitter for real-time search, W-A where it's strong, and even using Live.com when Google doesn't return meaningful results.