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Better Search Doesn’t Mean Beating Google

March 10, 2009
by Saul Hansell
Technology Writer, New York Times

Saul Hansell

A headline that kicked around the blogosphere this weekend made no sense to me: “Wolfram Alpha Is Coming–and It Could Be as Important as Google.” (GOOG)

The post–written by Nova Spivack, the chief executive of Radar Networks–took a look at a new sort of search engine being cooked up in secret by Stephen Wolfram, a British mathematician.

Wolfram’s search engine, called Wolfram Alpha, is meant to be able to answer specific factual questions in a far more precise way than any search engine before it. For example, it will parse questions like “What is the location of Timbuktu?” or “How many protons are in a hydrogen atom?” to answer the questions rather than simply pull up sites that have the answer on them.

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