Wolfram Alpha is one of a number of efforts to build greater understanding of the meaning of words — or semantics — into search, said Oren Etzioni, a computer scientist at the University of Washington. I.B.M.’s Watson, Apple’s Siri and Wolfram Alpha rely on structured databases of knowledge, while Google and Bing are trying to add more semantic understanding into general search engines. - NYTimes.com

The progress, Dr. Etzioni said, is good for the field. “It raises the stakes for everyone around the table,” he said.