Wolfram Alpha

Recently a new website has launched, called Wolfram Alpha. Wolfram Alpha is a search engine like no other, you type in a query and it gives you an answer in the results page, without the need to click through to another website. As such it is possible to loads of cool things, such as find out the weather in a particular location on a particular date (in this example the weather in London on Sunday 8th June 1997). However, the page does have some limitations. More detaisl on this new search engine can be found on a hub I wrote called simply Wolfram Alpha.

The feeling I have though is sites like this cause problems for internet businesses and those who rely on the internet to make some extra money. The reason being they get a lot of traffic from conventional search engines, and sites like Wolfram Alpha negate the need to direct traffic to particular sites to get their information. Even if Wolfram Alpha doesn't take off, it is worth noting that this is a factor which is starting to spread more and more into Google etc, and one can only expect such answers directly provided by Google to continue.