We challenge there to be anyone that hasn’t had a bit of fun messing around with Wolfram Alpha when it was launched earlier in the year. The search engine had a completely different approach to the idea of how we search online – one that was embraced by many IT professionals and tech gurus for it’s brilliant handling of statistical and mathematical data.
However, the search engine’s 15 minutes of fame tended to be direct comparisons to Google – something Wolfram was never made for – and it faded out of the limelight. Whether it will survive as anything but a niche search engine seemed unlikely.
However, it seems like Microsoft could be brining Wolfram Alpha – or at least, the technology behind it- right back into the spotlight, this time designed to be used on their mainstream consumer search engine, Bing. Bing was released only a few short months ago and has, against nearly all odds, actually received a large amount of favourable reviews even if its struggled turning many people off Google.
It’s been reported that Microsoft wanted to bring some of Wolframs technology on board even before their launch, but this hadn’t been possible. It’s still not yet clear exactly how the technology will be implemented into the search engine and what benefits it will have to end users, but it will certainly bring Wolfram into the eyes of the public in a way that Wolfram Alpha itself could never have done.
Meanwhile, Google’s own attempt at a computing engine, Google Squared, has made little impact in the market due to its questionable results and slow load times. The Wolfram technology could be exactly what Bing needs to push it over the edge and start making serious inroads into Google’s market share, becoming the first serious competitor Google will have faced for a very long time.
No related posts.
