Wolfram Alpha Offers New Twist On Flight Search: Literal Answers To What Planes Are Overhead
You may not love this as much as I do, but that's okay. Wolfram Alpha has just launched what I'd have to put on any year-end list of the coolest search technologies of 2011: a tool that tells you …
Context & Ripple Effects
Wolfram Alpha has spent 2011 doing what it has done since its 2009 first impressions debut: proving the computable-knowledge engine one narrow domain at a time. The arc so far runs from early claims that the tool could be 'as important as Google', through a distribution deal putting its answers inside Bing, to monetization experiments like the $50 iPhone app that critics panned when the website was free.
First-order effects
- The new tool gives Wolfram Alpha a live, real-time showcase — planes overhead answered literally rather than as links — that demonstrates the engine handling streaming data instead of static reference knowledge.
- Search Engine Land's reviewer flags it as year-end-list material, giving Wolfram Alpha earned media at zero cost after paying for distribution through Bing and app-store pricing experiments.
Second-order effects
- General-purpose engines like Google and Bing face pressure to match literal-answer capabilities in their own results, since a small engine winning 'coolest search technology' plaudits highlights what keyword search still cannot do.
- Bing gains leverage from the deal it struck in 2009: every novel Wolfram Alpha capability deepens the answer layer Microsoft can offer without building it in-house.
Third-order effects
- If vertical-by-vertical expansion keeps working, search splits structurally between engines that rank documents and answer engines that compute results — with Wolfram Alpha positioned as the supplier of computed answers to whichever front end wins the query.
- The pattern also tests whether niche live-data tools are a viable business for a small engine, given that earlier attempts to charge directly (the $50 app) failed against free web access.
The trend: Search is drifting from ranked links toward computed, literal answers, with Wolfram Alpha expanding domain by domain and licensing that capability to larger engines.