We have to give it to the guy - the proposal to setup any rival search engine in today's economy is very ambitious. Wolfram is the mad scientist behind the successful Mathematica software. If you haven't heard of it, don't worry - it's mainly used by scientists as a computational tool.
Mr Wolfram's creation is best described as a 'question and answer' portal, rather than a traditional search engine. According to this report, the search tool uses sophisticated algorithms (based on a computational knowledge engine) which are better placed to figuring our your search queries with the onus placed on answering your questions.
For example: Maybe you're wondering what is the largest mountain in the world? Or how many days until North Korea launches a nuclear weapon? Ok, maybe not that question.
Although Google will perform a similar question and answer function (see this example), the Wolfram search portal aims to do this instinctually, delving into the data behind the answers, and offering extra knowledge without the need to return top-ranked page searches as Google is inclined to do. It is likely that Wolfram's search portal will maintain an extensive database of answers in order to speed up search queries.
Before this search engine attempts to take over the world ala Skynet, we have one piece of good advice for Mr Wolfram: consider changing the name of your search engine. Punters prefer easy to remember search site names that are punchy and a little ironic such as Google or Yahoo. This search engine will be called Wolfram Alfa; perhaps a little too smarty-pants and geeky for the masses.
"Hang on honey, I'm just going to Wolfram Alfa the answer." Nope, we can't see it either.