14 DAY TRIAL // The Wolfram Alpha search engine was launched to quite a bit of hype several months ago but the buzz has since dropped considerably along with the traffic numbers. The project is far from completion of course – it is labeled an alpha after all – and the launch was meant only to help the team better test and develop the product, but it still wasn't a good sign. The numbers are starting to pick up again though and Wolfram has made a great step forward with the announcement of the availability of a new API to access the data.
“The response to Wolfram|Alpha and the interest from the community in using the API to build innovative computational knowledge applications has been staggering. Since Wolfram|Alpha launched in May, developers anticipating the release of the API have been sending us their ideas for how they want to use Wolfram|Alpha in their applications,” Wolfram's Schoeller Porter wrote. “I stopped counting after the 2000th idea crossed my desk. Overwhelmingly, developers see Wolfram|Alpha as a platform for building a business—providing commercial services that leverage Wolfram|Alpha’s unique capabilities.”
Wolfram Alpha can be labeled a search engine but a Google killer it is not, for several reasons. First of all, its scope isn't to retrieve the best places where a user may find the information he needs, it actually presents him with the processed data or information, partly based on what is available on the world wide web but still coming straight from Wolfram Alpha's massive database. The second big differentiating characteristic is the fact that all of the information is stored in the project's data centers and that it is capable of manipulating it in a large number of ways depending on the user's needs.
This approach makes it less suitable as a dedicated site, hence the drop in traffic numbers, but a much better fit as a data source to be used in specialized applications. This is why an API designed to give developers access to the data and the computational capabilities is crucial to the project. The API is now live, enabling developers to put Wolfram Alpha's powerful infrastructure to good use, albeit for a price. Access to the API won't be free but this is understandable as the company doesn't have Google's resources and building and running supercomputers can be quite an expensive undertaking. It remains to be seen whether this will mark a much needed revival but the potential is definitely there.