Microsoft Acquires Powerset
Powerset has been acquired by Microsoft, a move that has been rumored for a long time and resurfaced this week. Microsoft has plans to integrate the company’s search and natural language features into Live Search. Powerset’s employees will remain in San Francisco and become part of the Microsoft’s Search Relevance team.
This is a great opportunity for Powerset - they’ve yet to go public with their entire product (they currently only allow searches of Wikipedia content - it’s really good, too) and Microsoft is sure to benefit, but are they going about this the right way?
Google owns search. It’s been this way for a long time and despite Google’s best efforts their brand has become synonymous with search (This branding leads to a “watering down” of the brand making it less powerful - think of Kleenex. How many of you have a different brand of facial tissue sitting around the house yet still call it Kleenex?).
So, Google’s been dominating the search market forever and as we all know - people are biased, prejudice, and come to every table with predisposed opinions in regards to the rest of those around the table.
Google: Best search engine their is - great bonuses (Apps for Domains, Mail, etc). Are they spreading themselves to thin? They have a bad habit of ignoring some of their bonuses.
Yahoo: A portal - most of their stuff is easily replaced with newer, more engaging content. Flickr and del.icio.us are nice. Should have sold to Microsoft. How much are they really contributing to this Google/Yahoo search Flash content idea?
Microsoft: uhh… probably better than Yahoo, I don’t know. My wife uses MSN Messenger to IM me (I use Pidgin). Microsoft/MSN/Live - can’t they pick a name and stick to it?
See what I mean? Adding Powerset to Live Search is a waste of the technology! I’m sorry Live but you will never become king of search - at least not apparently.
Here’s what should have happened: Microsoft acquires Powerset and leaves them alone. Let the team keep doing what they are doing, developing a technology that will surpass Google one day. I’m not saying Powerset is the company that will do this - especially not as Live Search - but the technology itself is the future of search.
Google was spread by word of mouth by a bunch of us nerds - I still remember when I first was told about it, on mIRC. I’ve used it at least 80 times every day since that first introduction - it was small, simple, and just a bunch of nerds making something better.
Powerset didn’t quite have the small, simple, and bunch of nerds parts down - it’s had quite a few highly publicized multi-million dollar rounds of financing. But, it easily could have taken the “word of mouth” tactic and spread like wildfire through the nerd community. That’s the key to search - the nerd community. When my wife/mom can’t find something on the Internet they ask me and I always reply, “Google this: [well formed search phrase].”
What if I would have started saying, “Powerset this: [natural language search].” It will never happen with Live in the header…
I looked at PowerSet when I heard this news a couple of days ago, but I still don’t see the added advantage of using natural language constructs in a search query.
It doesn’t generate more or better results than using a traditional approach.
Example:
“Who was the 13th President of the United States?”
Now remove all verbs, adverbs, punctuation, etc…; and you’re left with “president United States 13″ which generates a perfect answer using Google.
If anybody knows why natural language search is the new Web 3.0; please enlighten me..
@Jakob
See what you did there? “Now remove all verbs, adverbs, punctuation, etc”
That is what we, as computer savvy people, do instinctively. We know how to generate well-formed search queries but we are a very small minority when it comes to the overall Internet population.
I agree with Michael here. Us geeks are used to using a sequence of short terms in what we do, usually programming, so just typing in the right keywords into Google feels normal.
For example, Googling “how many whales are there” doesn’t really give the right results (I’m getting how many there were *before* whaling), however, “population of whales” works reasonably better. This is one place that natural speech will play a role, letting computers understand what phrases actually mean the same thing. Until then, Google searches are inherently better at looking for specific websites, not information.