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The Wolfram|Alpha Team

Wolfram|Alpha and DuckDuckGo Partner on API Binding and Search Integration

April 18, 2011 —
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Today, in conjunction with DuckDuckGo, we are happy to share that Wolfram|Alpha and DuckDuckGo have entered a new phase of our relationship as official partners. As a result of this partnership, DuckDuckGo will expand Wolfram|Alpha integration into its search site and will maintain the now-official Wolfram|Alpha API Perl binding.

Users of the up-and-coming search site DuckDuckGo know that the site is unique because it doesn’t track history, contains less spam, features a cute bow tie-wearing duck, and provides zero-click information that immediately pops up under the search box. Since the release of the Wolfram|Alpha API, DuckDuckGo has been gradually integrating Wolfram|Alpha’s computational knowledge engine into its offerings, providing users with dynamically computed facts.

DuckDuckGo -- population of metro Atlanta

Our friendship began when Gabriel Weinberg, Founder of DuckDuckGo,  volunteered to be an early Wolfram|Alpha tester. He went on to develop the now-official Wolfram|Alpha Perl API binding and began featuring select Wolfram|Alpha functionality on DuckDuckGo.

“Integrating Wolfram|Alpha into DuckDuckGo was a no-brainer decision, as it can provide instant answers for a broad range of general search queries that are otherwise not easy to get answers to. That’s because Wolfram|Alpha does deep processing of a lot of non-web datasets”, said Weinberg.

“Our primary goal with the launch of version 2 of the API in January was to open Wolfram|Alpha to all developers and their broad spectrum of clever ideas”, said Wolfram|Alpha’s Schoeller Porter, Architect, Developer Relations. “Gabriel and DuckDuckGo exemplify the entrepreneurial spirit by integrating Wolfram|Alpha’s computed knowledge into web search in a compelling, relevant, and ingenious way. We’re excited to be a part of DuckDuckGo’s continued growth”.

So what does this new partnership mean for you? If you are a DuckDuckGo user, you’ll start to notice expanded Wolfram|Alpha integration. DuckDuckGo will start adding more Wolfram|Alpha functionality and datasets based on users’ suggestions. If there’s a specific topic area you’d like to see integrated into DuckDuckGo, your suggestions are welcome.

If you are a Perl developer with creative ideas for integrating Wolfram|Alpha into your application, you can take advantage of the free Wolfram|Alpha Perl API binding. “The Wolfram Perl API gives you a straightforward Perl object-oriented data structure to work with that is based on the Wolfram|Alpha output”, said Weinberg. “The Perl API abstracts away the connecting and parsing aspects of working with the Wolfram|Alpha API, giving you a straightforward Perl object-oriented data structure to work with in your programs”.

Wolfram|Alpha and DuckDuckGo are looking forward to sharing future integrations and API development.

For media information, contact DuckDuckGo and Wolfram|Alpha.

12 Comments

great news! 🙂

Posted by pera April 18, 2011 at 3:06 pm

Please support more languages than English. It sucks.

Posted by sdbn April 18, 2011 at 4:01 pm

Not supporting other languages means Google will still be the giant search engine that no one can compete to.

Posted by bull April 18, 2011 at 5:25 pm

This is great news. DDG just seems to get better every week. If you haven’t, check it out: http://duckduckgo.com/?u=scodtt

Posted by Scott Yates April 18, 2011 at 5:27 pm

Good job, I like DDG and I’ve found the Wolfram|Alpha integration useful 🙂

Posted by DuckFan April 19, 2011 at 1:06 am

interesting!

Posted by diskie April 19, 2011 at 2:43 am

My two favourite search/computational engines teaming up – best of luck to both of you 🙂

My only hope is that you do not become self aware and start launching missiles.

Posted by Kris April 19, 2011 at 3:26 am

This is really nice – although there seems to be a problem with umlauts:
http://duckduckgo.com/?q=How+many+people+are+living+in+Germany

In the WA box it says: “(Mitteleurop?ische Sommerzeit)” instead of “(Mitteleuropäische Sommerzeit)”.

Is this a problem with the WA API or with DuckDuckGo?

Posted by vonjd April 19, 2011 at 3:35 am

…yes, Wolfram|Alpha and DuckDuckGo are on my favorites list, too! Good news and good for growth, all around!

Posted by Mitch May 14, 2011 at 7:53 pm

This should make for some really great applications, looking forward to this. Maybe even a few more code snippets that others will be able to add to their own site? 🙂 Also, I just wanted to say as my first comment on Wolfram|Alpha, that I think this is an awesome site with tons of valuable information. I use it all the time for advanced mathematics…

Posted by Chris P July 12, 2011 at 8:41 pm

What happened to the relationship between Wolfram|Alpha and DuckDuckGo? No longer it seems are answer being provided by WA.

Posted by Duck November 4, 2014 at 4:37 pm

Is this no longer true? I can’t seem to get the wolfram answers anymore using duckduckgo

Posted by David November 14, 2014 at 12:26 pm