Recently, WolframAlpha has been making some noise saying it can perform better searches than google. From what I understand, WolframAlpha claims to understand the words you type into the search bar, thus returning better search results, whereas google will only search your words literally with its PageRank algorithm. Say for example, if you type in “short CEO”, WolframAlpha will give you the info on the short CEO such as his name, his business, and so forth, while google will give you anything related to your search words.
I don’t think WolframAlpha will be anywhere close to being a threat to google. If anything, google can just buy them out.
WolframAlpha will be having their webcast soon on May 15th 7pm CST.