This sounds a lot like Wolfram Alpha, although google does now provide some quantitative results. It works as a calculator and as a units translator for example.
that's a good point about only the first few results mattering.
that's a good point about only the first few results mattering.
wolframalpha is computer algebra software turned into a web service which allows for searching some papers, pre-written articles and a bunch of interesting, curated numbers.
wolframalpha provides qualitative answers to "questions about math".
answering the physics problem "whats the speed of light" with "er its fast" is qualitative. saying its 2.99+/- epsilon 10^6 km/s is a quantitative result based on data gathered from some experiment.
answering the search engine problem "whats the speed of light" with "2.99+/- epsilon 10^6 km/s" is not a quantitative result. in a search engine contexts, thats just the most likely correct result . qualitative. just a guess. some computer looked at a bunch of data and decided that one of them was probably right based on some popularity heuristic. its like asking an expert who makes an educated guess and claims its right because seniority.
a quantitative search engine would be capable of answering questions like "how many sites do X".
wolframalpha doesnt do that. its just maple in a browser.
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=IR+spectrum+of+toluene
http://webbook.nist.gov/cgi/cbook.cgi?ID=C108883&Units=SI&Ty...