Wolfram Research is the creator of Mathematica, an application popular in math, engineering and science circles. Mathematica gained its technical fame by its ability to do calculations in algebra, number theory and computational geometry.

The new search service uses the Mathematica engine, along with massive databases filled with what Gray says are several trillion individual data points. He calls it the "largest and most diverse collection of data" ever pulled together. WolframAlpha reportedly has loads of information about science and technology, and is beefing up its databases with information on many areas weather and automobiles.

"Wolfram is the most sophisticated attempt to date to give users a way of getting direct answers from the Internet, rather than to rely on it as a collection of possible answers," said Dan Olds, principal analyst with Gabriel Consulting Group, Inc. "Their technique is highly rigorous, which is good, and if they are successful, it may well change the way that many people use the internet."

Olds, though, said said that he is concerned about where the answers come from and whether they are correct. It's a control freak's nightmare.

"It's a black box in that we don't see how it comes up with the answers it delivers," he added. "You give it a query and it comes back with an answer, rather than a selection of places where the answer may reside - like a . We all know from our experience on the Internet that you can find many different answers to the same question -- all purporting to be the right answer. We can look at each of them, evaluate them, and figure out which one we want to rely on. With Wolfram, it's a different story."