Wolfram Alpha - Interesting competition for Google and Wikipedia?

In a talk at Harvard Law School, Stephen Wolfram, a well-known mathematician, scientist and entrepreneur, gave a demonstration of his soon-to-be released Web service which promises to answer all sorts of questions. The service, called Wolfram Alpha, had technology bloggers abuzz that a rival to Google was about to hit the Web.

What can it do? It can describe places, like Lexington, Mass., by its vital statistics, such as location, population, weather, etc. It can compare Lexington with Moscow. If you type “LDL 180,” it will tell you the percentile of the population with higher or lower cholesterol and show you the answer on a chart. If you tell “LDL 180 male 45,” it will adjust the chart for gender and age group. It can chart the life expectancy of a male age 40 in Italy or tell you who was president of Brazil in 1928.

While Wolfram Alpha is not a Web search engine, it is possible it will compete with Google or other existing services like Wikipedia, for certain kinds of questions. Incidentally, in the middle of Mr. Wolfram’s presentation, Google announced a new search feature that makes it easy to find and compare data from public sources like the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.