“We are not a search engine.” Wolfram Alpha to launch on Monday

Well, the official launch of the much talked about Wolfram|Alpha is now May 18th, although a soft launch did indeed begin last night. Access is said to slowly become available to everyone throughout the weekend. A few press folks were able to get their hands on it to give it a spin ahead of time.

So, the verdict? Like founder and CEO Stephen Wolfram kept stating, it really isn’t like Google. Although of course everyone will be comparing it to the big “G.”

“We are not a search engine. No searching is involved here,” Wolfram said. “The types of things that people are currently searching for have some overlap [with Google], but it isn’t huge. What’s exciting is that we have a whole new class of things that people can put into a input field and have it tell them what it knows.”

The way Wolfram|Alpha works is by taking a query, and providing an answer. What also makes it really impressive is the way it does intelligent things even when you offer up non-query related info. For instance, it can calculate distance even when you don’t specify where you are by inferring your location (most likely by reading your IP address), and from there it adjusts the data accordingly.