Wolfram Alpha is not a web search. Google is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_mistake

I think Twitter is probably a better place for this kind of speculation.

I don't see Wolfram Alpha and Google and competing at all, but rather as complimentary services. Wolfram Alpha looks excellent for research and specific maths/science related queries, whereas google excels in general search.

If they can get their content to a respectable level for any given subject area, eg physics, I can see Wolfram Alpha becoming a valuable tool, worth paying a reasonable subscription to use.

Do you seriously Wolfram Alpha is trying to compete with Google? They'd much rather get integrated into Google, ala Google Calculator.

I think Wolfram Alpha is an elaborate advertisement for Mathematica.

No, it doesn't compete with search engines, but it will fail for the same reason that Microsoft search failed as explained above.

If it's not a search engine, then what is the significance of it failing as a search engine?

But your suggestion of WA as an ad makes sense - but what is held back in this freemium hypothesis, that will make users need Mathematica?

As for why people would buy Mathematica: companies are not going to give away their trade secrets over the web via queries made to Wolfram Alpha.

That's a compelling reason for some users. I thought WA would be slow, and that would be a reason to buy a local version (or a subscription to a faster version), but it surprised me how well it coped with the launch load. But after seeing your freemium idea, I've changed my mind to think they'll just leave off some features - that's the standard approach.

The notion of having every query answered in a reasonable way applies to all sorts of things -- not just search engines.

I suspect that Microsoft's failure in this regard would play out in many other contexts including this one. Imagine for example if Mathematica were to have a much higher failure rate.

Mathematica works as well as it does because an enormous amount of research has been put into one domain. Wolfram Alpha is not like that at all.

No one expects Mathematica to be a search engine. However, many people (not just you) expect WA to be a search engine, even though it clearly is not one.

It's a matter of expectation.

And it seems likely that creating this expectation is a deliberate ploy on WA's part to create publicity. "Google killer" is a much better media story than "mathematica online". They've designed the front page in a google-style, with a similar text interface, and probably many other ways I haven't noticed.

yup, why compete when you can get acquired.

I don't think Wolfram Alpha should be compared to Google as much as it should be compared to Wikipedia.

That being said, I don't think it's particularly fair to judge this genre of product on the first day of its initial release. I believe that over time, the developers will likely improve the algorithm.

I think WA will get beat by user curated data, ala Wikipedia: data beats algoritha these days.

What in the world makes WA incompatible with user curated data? They could easily implement http://open.wolframalpha.com add some warning/disclaimer pages that this is user-curated data, and let the world have at it.