WolframAlpha is a Google killer?

Ever since WolframAlpha came in spotlight people started to dub it as the ‘Google killer‘. What made them think like that could be the hype that Wolfram received even before its launch. Clearly, by looking how it works, I see no reason to call it the ‘next big thing’. It reminds me of those days when Digg was first introduced which was too called the Google killer even without knowing how that functions.

When a query is typed in WolframAlpha, it computes it mathematically and returns the information present about it. Unlike Google, which lists the best possible website for the query typed, Wolfram gives information with in itself in numbers (mainly).

Here are 2 examples that we can argue on whether Wolfram can be called as Google killer or not:

Example 1: I want to know about Britney spears, her show timings etc and hence typed Britney spears in both Google and WolframAlpha. The result in Wolfram is a mere information listing the date of birth and place of birth which I knew anyway

But on Google, the first website that turns up is the official website of Britney. If I’d want to know more details about her earlier life, I’d go onto Wikipedia which was the second website that was listed in the search. Britney on Twitter which was in third place in the search made my job much easier.

So which is a better tool? Clearly it’s Google. Isn’t it?

Example 2: I want to know about the company Yahoo, its current scrip price etc and hence type Yahoo in both Google and WolframAlpha.

Google listed Yahoo.com as its first website followed by other sub-domains of Yahoo. But those websites couldn’t give me the information I was looking for that easily.

But on WolframAlpha, I have complete information about Yahoo Company, number of employees, scrip price and much more including a comparison with its peer, Google.

Clearly, Wolfram made is very easy to get the information that I was looking for. Having said that, I had to wait for nearly 5 seconds to get that information after I hit the Search button. It’s awfully slow. Neglecting which WolframAlpha was a clear winner in this example.

So once should know when to use WolframAlpha to make full use of it and then call it whichever way you’d like to, either Google killer or Google helper.

Google helper? What the heck?

I said Google helper as you can see a ‘Search the web’ column in the right column slightly below which uses Google search in case you are not satisfied with its results.

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