Wolfram alpha should be positioned as a web search supplement. Just like how if you put some math equation into google search, it will calculate it for you, wolfram alpha has to do the opposite and add a web search for you. It will then become significantly more useful, since every query will have a web search fallback. If they load it in parts, like duck duck go does, even better. I think duck duck go with more extensive wolfram alpha integration would work.
I really enjoy using duckduckgo, but both it and wolframalpha suffer from slow response time.
I'm confident that I could query google, duckduckgo and wolframalpha for any query that all three could answer ("diameter of a quarter" ) and have the answer in google and then have followed the link to the wikipedia article on the US quarter before the answer appeared in either wolframalpha or duckduckgo.
In fact, I just checked, that's the case (for me at least). With wolframalpha I would have had time to enter the query into duckduckgo and then return to wolframalpha before the link I had to click to tell wolframalpha I meant "quarter" as a currency came up. Duckduckgo didn't answer the question for me, but it was a click away (so better than wolframalpha in that regard). I enjoy using wolframalpha for the things that I know have easy answers (populations, distances and measurements of celestial bodies, time measurements--30 days ago) and give concrete numbers, but would require slightly more effort to pull out of wikipedia.
I should test exact page load times for those queries from several geographically distinct locations on multiple browsers, but it's late and I'm now going to bed.
