It looks like Google can rest easier - WolframAlpha is online, and it's not doing the same sort of thing as Google (or other traditional search engines) at all. It's actually more in the Mahalo space, except that it's algorithm powered rather than people powered. Some examples:

Search for "What is Java"

How about "What is Smalltalk":

A search for RSS turns up the same sort of thing. It does really well on things that can be easily disambiguated; less well on things that can't be. I find it interesting that it knows that COBOL is a programming language, has no clue what Smalltalk is, and for Java, finds the island first :)