Wolfram Alpha looking to maul Google search

by Stevie Smith - Mar 9 2009, 18:30

The global search domination of Google may be undisputed at this point in time, but a British physicist is preparing to launch a powerful and new online search engine that could well knock the market leader off its throne.

According to Stephen Wolfram (49), his company Wolfram Research plans to officially unveil its “Wolfram Alpha” search system at some point in May. While set to serve as a search engine in a conventional sense, the upcoming service will differ notably from its rivals by understanding and reacting to parameters laid out by specific user questions.

“Fifty years ago, when computers were young, people assumed that they’d quickly be able to handle all these kinds of things,” outlined Wolfram through the official company Web site, “…and that one would be able to ask a computer any factual question and it compute the answer.”

Wolfram went on the explain that despite progressive technological advances suggesting such interactive information processing between man and machine was unlikely, he realised a few years ago that he himself was in a position to finally make a significant breakthrough.

Although in-depth information regarding the processes employed by Wolfram Alpha is not yet known, its creator has said the system is able to understand and answer all manner of user questions by applying an extensive mathematical and scientific engine and not merely searching for match results in a huge database.

“The way humans normally communicate is through natural language – and when one’s dealing with the whole spectrum of knowledge, I think that’s the only realistic option for communicating with computers too,” said Wolfram.

“Of course, getting computers to deal with natural language has turned out to be incredibly difficult,” he added. “And, for example, we’re still very far away from having computers systematically understand large volumes of natural language text on the web.”

A notoriously elusive method of communication between man and machine, a search engine functioning through natural language processing could have far-reaching potential for all Web users.

By way of comparison, existing online engines such as Google return their search results by trawling though billions of online documents in an attempt to match specific key words from the user’s request.

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