If you listened to the media recently, you would have believed that God Himself decided that Google had become just a little too self-centered and smote them with the new Divine Search Engine, called Wolfram|Alpha (Of course, God would have come up with a better name than that).
Cries of “The next Google” and “The future of search” slipped off everyone’s tongue with the passion and glee of finding out that Brad was cheating on Angelina with Jennifer.
So, I couldn’t help myself. I gave it try. And all I can say is…
…Meh!
First of all, what kind of search engine doesn’t let you search? To be fair (and we’re always fair here at Mockaholic), the company says it’s not a search engine, but a “a computational knowledge engine.”
But I just call it lame. If there was any Greek letter before alpha, it should have been used here. Maybe “Wolfram|Milli-Alpha.”
The most interesting thing I could find to do was to enter my birthday and see the information it spit out. But to be honest, The History Channel’s ThisDayInHistory.com gives me better results. At least I can find out that I share a birthday with Stan Laurel.
Google-Killer? I don’t think so. If Wolfram|Alpha knows what’s good for it, it’ll jump into the WaybackMachine and try to launch this in 1999 instead of 2009. Oh wait…ThisDayInHistory.com was available then, as well.
-J
