WolframAlpha to take Web search one step further

BANGALORE, INDIA: Looking for answers to your varied questions? It isn't just Google you should be looking for now. WolframAlpha, an innovation from Stephen Wolfram, is equipped to serve users with a question-answering computer system. The yet to debut service, however, is not intended to take on Google, the man behind the innovation clarifies.

The scientist and entrepreneur and the founder of Wolfram Research says that his service does not search through web pages. Instead, it computes the answers to queries using enormous collections of data the company has amassed. Ask any question, and the service would throw up answers.

Stephen Wolfram is the brain behind the Mathematica program, which is widely used throughout the science world

According to a 'New York Times' report, WolframAlpha is expected to be available to the public at wolframalpha.com by next week, though it has not been fully built. This, in fact, is a first-of-its-kind initiative where the target was to create a computer system that can answer questions.

Pointing out that the service has become an example of achieving something that is virtually impossible, experts said that the new service has the potential to be a massive player alongside Google.

WolframAlpha does not gather data from the Web. Instead, its knowledge base is made up of a wide range of data. When a user types in a query, WolframAlpha tries to determine the relevant area of knowledge and find the answers, often by performing calculations on its data.

Considering that is only half done, WolframAlpha might find impossible to answer many questions, either because it does not understand the question or because it does not have the requisite data.

The report pointed out that WolframAlpha does not actually try to work out the real meaning of a query, as some artificial intelligence systems do, so there are some questions it will never be able to answer. But experts say its approach appears to be effective in many areas.