Sure this modern day search technology works, but it has several limitations. For one, the search results simply point you to websites where you 'might' find the information you're looking for. Two, you have to yourself judge the accuracy of facts thrown up. Three, the process of finding the right information is time consuming because you have to go through so many links.

With the amount of information available on the Internet growing by leaps and bounds, and other information like audio, video, images also growting, this method of searching will soon loose its effectiveness. For instance, what if you have a photograph and want to find other similar ones like it on the Internet? Or, if you want to download a particular song, but don't remember its lyrics, only the tune. How do you find it on the Internet? These are some of the things being developed for Internet search.

Wolfram|Alpha, the Computational engine
Computer scientist Stephen Wolfram, the inventor of Mathematica -a multi-faceted program created in 1988 to provide a uniform system for all forms of algorithmic computation, has landed in with yet another approach called computational engine.

Computational engine gets you direct information in visual representations unlike regular search engines like Google, which simply returns links to Web pages.

Instead of searching the web and returning links, the computational engine called Wolfram Alpha generates output by doing computations from its own internal knowledge base. The search engine basically brings you systematic factual knowledge, gets you things that are known, and are somehow public. It only deals with facts and not opinions. Data that this engine comes up with are mainly from internal knowledge base.

An interesting thing here is that, the data in Wolfram|Alpha is derived by computations, often based on multiple sources. It deploys formulas and algorithms to compute answers for searchers. We can ask WolphramAplha manythings in WolphramAplha . For example, you can ask about the molecular weight of cholesterol, location of a gene in the human genome, the number of people named John born in a particular year, the life expectancy of 50-year-olds in a country, the performance of Google stock, the height of Mt. Everest, etc.