Microsoft has revealed that its partnership with Wolfram Alpha is set to deliver enhanced Bing search results later this week.
Wolfram Alpha, launched back in May by British scientist Stephen Wolfram, was dubbed as a new form of search engine that hopes to make "systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone". Taking the questions or calculations of users, the Wolfram Alpha search engine uses custom algorithms and a pool of data to compute the answer.
However, in a search environment dominated by market leader Google, Wolfram Alpha has struggled to live up to the hype and now hopes to make a bigger impact as part of Microsoft's Bing.
Launched earlier in the year, Microsoft's Bing search engine is seen as the biggest threat to Google's dominance, and has been chipping away at search-engine market share in recent months. According to analysts, Bing's U.S. market share rose to nearly 10 per cent in October.
In addition to providing Google-like listings of search results, Microsoft has previously stated that Bing's long-term goal is "to deliver innovations in search that enable people to find information quickly and use the information they've found to accomplish tasks and make smart decisions".
In keeping with that goal, Microsoft's partnership with Wolfram Alpha should equip the Bing search engine with direct answers to certain questions - as opposed to just a list of search results.
"We‘ll be providing access to Wolfram|Alpha’s advanced algorithms and expertly curated data within the Bing experience," says Tracey Yao, Bing program manager.
"This new and exciting work is completely aligned with our broader goal of enabling faster, more informed decisions. Specifically, we will bring nutritional information and tools into Bing’s search results, as well as some straight up hard math and homework help," she adds.
Microsoft adds that the integration of Wolfram Alpha will first be made available to U.S. customers, where Bing search results should begin to show computed results in the coming days.
