Wolfram Alpha smartens up Bing's search

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Bing has a smart new friend in the form of Wolfram Alpha.

The search pair are teaming up, with Bing integrating Wolfram Alpha into its own search, letting Microsoft's new search engine better handle calculations and equations.

Wolfram Alpha launched earlier this year, with many suggesting it would finally be the search tool to take a shot at knocking Google out of the number one spot. However, once the site went live, it became clear the site was not your standard search - it doesn't return search results, it brings back answers.

Google and other search engines have long done this for basic calculations, letting users add up numbers or convert currencies, for example. Microsoft's Bing already includes such a function.

Including Wolfram Alpha in its search will expand that capability, and give Bing an edge in at least one way over rival Google, which announced its own computing engine Google Squared last year. Though Squared is still in labs, it hasn't made much of a mark.

Microsoft had yet to respond to our request for comment on the exact nature of the deal at the time of publication, but TechCrunch suggested Bing would licence the content from Wolfram and display it inside Bing.

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