The debut of Wolfram/Alpha, a computational knowledge engine, perhaps provides a glimpse of what is to come, with respect to the future of search engines. Wolfram/Alpha not only displays data graphically, unlike traditional search engines, but also displays data relationships to what is being queried. In it’s current state Wolfram/Alpha may not displace Google anytime soon, but the advent of knowledge integrated with search queries is a powerful new paradigm, that may serve as a robust internal knowledge management tool.
See also http://www.silobreaker.com for a much more mature analytical/search product.
after looking at Wolfram more, it and silobreaker are targeted at different things.
Yes, Wolfram/Alpha is great. Looked at my birthdate and number of days I have been on Earth (21,000+). Scary. Also, take a look at these relatively new search engines:
http://www.searchme.com
http://www.kosmix.com/
http://www.meehive.com (integrates with Facebook and searches based on stated interests)
BTW, nice meeting you at the Gov 2.0 Camp.
To see where the future may be headed — it involves yet another version of the web — see what Sue Murphy wrote the other day about cornflakes.
Bing teams up with Wolfram Alpha: Microsoft has teamed up with a web tool once hailed as a rival to Google to provide results for its search engine Bing.
Recorded Future : the world’s first Temporal Analytics Engine.
Google and In-Q-Tel (CIA) funded startup Recorded Future mines public and other available online data online to identify patterns that are predictive of future events. Their Temporal Analytics Engine can find hidden links between online document which deal with the same data and events. It can understand complicated relationships by simply parsing text to determine when and where events happen, who’s involved, and sense the context as well – in real time. This data can be then used to view current trends, and to an extent, even their curve in the future.