Set to launch tomorrow is a website that claims to provide structure to the webs infinite amount of data. Wolfram Alpha, named after British inventor Dr. Stephen Wolfram, is a search engine that claims to have the ability to work things out on the fly, just as a human would. It takes search results and compiles them into a database using a combination of human and machine generated content. This search engine is not for the faint of heart though. Early reviews are mixed, with some reporting the results are more complicated than they wanted and others reporting it provides info that no other engine can.

The concept of Wolfram Alpha is a good one; organizing something that is slowly spiraling out of control with data, the internet. However, one big, $120+ billion speed bump stands in their way, Google. With Yahoo! and MSN struggling to gain any ground on the behemoth, it is going to be an uphill battle for Wolfram Alpha to change the gravitational pull of Google and its 141MM visitors per month.

What Wolfram Alpha did successfully do is give the hare a swift kick in the behind. In response to all of the commotion about the new engine, Google released news of Google Squared the day Dr. Wolfram previewed his engine. Similar to Wolfram, Google Squared will provide structure to content across the web, displaying results as squares in an online spreadsheet, thus the name. While the science behind Wolfram Alpha may be superior, Google Squared has one advantage, it will be found within the Google umbrella.

I would be naïve to assume that Google will never be toppled, but is Wolfram Alpha the one to do it? With a name that hardly rolls off the tongue, Wolfram Alpha has an uphill battle. While they may not topple Google, in 5 years we may look back at May 15th, 2009 as the day search changed.

By using AJAX to build their interface, Google has created a platform that now uses common sense technology. If you see something you wish to change you click on it and change it. For example, in the old system if you wanted to update bids on a term you would check the term and click “edit keyword settings” and then make your changes and click “save changes”. While the page refreshes were relatively quick, to make changes you had to follow only this process. With the new platform, keyword bids changes can be made on any screen where that keyword appears, including reports. Additionally, the idea of bread crumbs have been eliminated and you can navigate between adgroups, even across campaigns, with one click and no loading, allowing more time for reporting and optimizing.

This is a huge leap from the technology found in Yahoo!’s Sponsored Search or Microsoft’s AdCenter. Yahoo! for example, actually takes Google’s setup and converts it to another document that then needs to be uploaded into their platform. This makes no sense. If you create the technology to convert it, why not just upload it straight in. As for making bid changes, tedious is not a strong enough word. While the process is just as many steps as Google, the average page load takes upwards of 10 seconds. This is fascinating since it takes Yahoo! 0.13 seconds to return 216M search results on the term “allergy”.

At least Yahoo! can allow you to upload something into their system, MSN has tried and failed miserably at creating a system for uploading new campaigns. Therefore you have to rely on people to do it for you, which can take days. And for the little amount of volume it typically brings, who has the patience for that?

I am not surprised that Yahoo! lags so far behind, it did take 3 years for them to implement a performance bid model, but MSN has no excuse. Microsoft, arguably the technology leader, should have the resources and the intelligence to create an interface that makes it easy and manageable to run a search campaign. Solving the dashboard issue won’t create searches, but if the plan MSN has to become a real force in the search world succeeds, the worst thing they can do is create a speed bump with their advertising interface.

My recommendation: For Microsoft and Yahoo! to please sign-up for Google’s new AdWords platform and try to learn a few things and accept the fact that Google knows what they are doing.