Google Squared went live today! Instead of providing a list of links to ranked pages, Google Squared presents information derived from a query in a spreadsheet-like grid called a square.

“‘It essentially searches the Web to find the types of facts you might be interested in, extracts them and presents them in a meaningful way,” Google says. “If your square isn’t perfect at the beginning, it’s easy to work with Google Squared to get a better answer.”

This video, from Google’s blog, shows you some of the features.

Will Google Squared kill Wolfram Alpha?

“Google Squared is a search tool that helps you quickly build a collection of facts from the Web for any topic you specify:

* Facts about your topic are organized as a table of items and attributes (we call them “Squares” for fun).
* Customize these Squares to see just the items and attributes you’re interested in.
* See the websites that served as sources for the information in your Square.
* Save and share Squares with others.

“While gathering facts from across the Internet is relatively easy (albeit tedious) for humans to do, it’s far more difficult for computers to do automatically. Google Squared is a first step towards solving that challenge. It essentially searches the web to find the types of facts you might be interested in, extracts them and presents them in a meaningful way.”

Does this sound familiar?

Try searching for ‘roller coasters’ using Google Squared and Wolfram Alpha. The winner, here, is clear.

However, Wolfram Alpha can outperform Google at almost everything computational (can Google do this?).

Wolfram Alpha’s data was organized by real live humans; Google Squared is algorithmic.

In a way, this is a very interesting, very public example of the race between humans and machines; how long will it be before Google’s algorithms outstrip Wolfram Alpha’s literal brain-power. Can computers match our minds? Time will tell. Some certainly think so.