Microsoft buys Powerset
Techtree News Staff, Jul 02, 2008 1313 hrs IST
Microsoft confirms that it has acquired search startup Powerset. It hopes to integrate Powerset's semantic search engine into Live Search
Rumours of this deal followed denials yesterday; it has been confirmed today though that Microsoft has indeed acquired search-engine startup Powerset. Microsoft plans to use Powerset s natural language search capabilities to power their Live Search engine.
Powerset's engine allows one to form search queries as natural sentences, rather than stringing words together like contemporary search engines require. Such a natural interface to search is believed to be the next step in smartly tapping the data glut that is the Internet. This acquisition will also give Microsoft ammo against rival Google, as the software behemoth continues its struggle to find a meaningful foothold in the lucrative search market.
According to the Live Search team, "We're buying Powerset first and foremost because were impressed with the people there. The team went on further to explain the technological advantage that semantic searches presents. A fundamental reason for failed searches is that of context. The Search team elaborated using an interesting example, stating that differences in context between what one intended to search for and the manner in which information is presented on a web site differs. This difference throws up results which are not in sync with what the user expected out of the query string. The example elaborates that: "We don't understand that cancer sometimes refers to a disease and sometimes refers to a horoscope and when a query or a webpage refers to which." This is just one of the problems that a more natural search query and a semantic engine hopes to solve.
It would be interesting to see just how successful Microsoft will be in integrating Powerset's technology. By their own admission there is some amount of work left before the tech can be leveraged to crawl, index, and serve the billions of pages which comprise the interweb. This is a welcome news though, as any progress made in improving search should be considered positive.
Live Search blog: Powerset joins Live Search
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