The Big Daddy of Google is here : Wolfram|Alpha
I was absolutely stunned by seeing this. Mind it its not just a search engine. If you ask W|A "who are you" it answers " I am a computational knowledge engine"
The goal of W|A is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable. well thats really a huge ambitious project. I salute those scientists and engineers behind this very noble thought.
What makes W|A different from google. Well its just the way they are structured or being more specific W|A answers almost all questions based on data through mathematical computaions, unlike google which largely depends on indexing of the web pages. This surely helps in answering questions which are not already asked on the internet. something as stupid as "mass of earth/ mass of dog"
Some more specific comparisons can be something like "wind speed" W|A calculates the wind speed specific to your location whereas google gives every link related to the keyword 'windspeed'
Well its a great computational engine. Right now it wont be a threat to google, but surely it has lots and lots of potential. Its just a baby in cradle, slowly it will grow and i need to make a relationship with it to better understand it.
It does make homeworks simpler :)