So with all the hooplah about Wolfram Alpha, what's the most likely response from Google? TechCrunch had a piece a few days ago on something the people at Google are calling Google Squared...

The idea is to treat the web as a database of information and mine it. Nobody cares what site you got it from. Just tell me... How many acorns does one mature oak tree produce in a year? How many eggs does a robin lay? How far is it from London to Sydney? How much does a giraffe weigh? How much is Warren Buffett worth? Simple questions. So just give me the answers.

Google Squared extracts data from Web pages and presents them in search results as squares in an online spreadsheet.

Want to see a demo? Watch the video from TechCrunch. It's a little hazy, but you'll get the idea.