Google is not at all in mood to play role of Good boy in Wolfram Alpha case and its intentions are loud and clear that it takes all the competition and comments seriously. Since Stephen Wolfram released its idea to enter Search space with Wolfram|Alpha, there is a wild talk around touting the new search engine as probable "Google Killer". But how true and viable that comment is can only be decided with time when W|A will be officially launched.

Though we are already seeing comparisons being made between the two, and Google outplaying W|A in search for non exact queries and otherwise in favor of Wolfram Alpha, there is still bit of curiosity and confusion around.

But Google is not going to sit back and see things unfold on its own. In fact it has already started movement in this direction to take up Wolfram Alpha on the battlefield. And in that matter it has clearly identified the existing strength for Wolfram Alpha - scientific and public data like weather, public demographic data, employment rate, etc.
Recently Google announced a search capability for public data, wherein if you go to Google.com and type in [unemployment rate] or [population] followed by a U.S. state or county one can see most recent estimates as a result on the search query.

Google is explaining this step as a part of data consolidation from Trendanalyzer takeover that happened two years ago but it also doesn't miss to point that, this is just fraction of public data that can be made available through Google and they are working in to garner related data capability into its engine.
So without any doubt tussle is on and we should be ready to hear more progress from Google front in this space.

Google public data: how it works