@malcolm1: It is you who has not read up enough about it. If you had, you would have seen that there are plans for the future, to get it to search the internet, and actually learn without any human interaction.
Totally agree with this, i think the initial reports are way over the top This is not a search engine but a next generation computational engine meaning that it won't necessary give cool and relevant results. But instead it will give answers to questions. So maybe a wiki killer and a yahoo answer killer but not a google killer However i think wa is totally cool and if it lives up to the hype will be invaluable for scientists, engineers and of course school kids and their homework More here http://www.itpro.co.uk/610121/british-scientist-takes-on-google-with-wolfram-alpha
I grab the parts and pieces in long articles and must have missed that (speed reading) But i do appreciate the tip since i didnt catch that part of the article thx malcolm
It won't compete with Google, as Alpha can only answer precise factual questions, and not even common sense ones since it doesn't have an ontology in which everything it knows is organized.
I have visited http://www.wolframalpha.com/ and found good result @ geographic label. It provide good result as compare popular search engine. san
Its all about algo & concepts.If some search engine write better algorithm than google then its bound to beat it.I personally & professionally like google but at the same time also look forward for other better option.I think mixing newest search engine technologies with artificial intelligence can create revolution.