Just to be fair, I tried a couple of your queries with Google, and the answers were not forthcoming either. But I suppose with Google I could do some SEO and get the answers to show up. Whereas I am not sure how to do that with Wolfram. Of course it only just came out.
The queries I tried were:
Q:distance traveled by space shuttle in one day
A:Lots of links, none of which gives canonical answer.
Q:explosive energy of five sticks of dynamite
A:Lots of links, only a few of which deal with dynamite the explosive.
Query time was roughly 9:30 AM Central Time Sunday May 16, 2009.
Still, I think both Google and Wolfram will go to this model over time. Which, of course, will be terrible for Google since revenue wise it is a one trick pony. I think it will be better for us though. It does seem more natural for me to ask for the population of Ningbo, and just get an answer instead of a list of links.
That took about 2 queries and 2 minutes - the first result for the space shuttle's speed compared a bunch of sources, 3 of which were in agreement.
Q: [dynamite explosive energy]
A: 2.1 million joules
Q: [2.1 * 5]
A: 10.5 million joules
Wikipedia was the first result for that, with the answer right on the page (and the text leading up to the answer in the snippet).
Curiously, a lot of people do use full-sentence queries - perhaps it's the lingering aftereffects of their 3rd grade teachers. If Wolfram Alpha can handle those correctly, it'll be a big win. But other search engines have tried - Ask.com is based around being able to ask questions in natural language. And it never seems to work that way - computers don't seem to know which of the many things you say are irrelevant.
The queries I tried were:
Still, I think both Google and Wolfram will go to this model over time. Which, of course, will be terrible for Google since revenue wise it is a one trick pony. I think it will be better for us though. It does seem more natural for me to ask for the population of Ningbo, and just get an answer instead of a list of links.