Microsoft Acquires Semantic Web Company Powerset
One has to admire Microsoft’s aggression in their push to take on Google. They continue to pursue Yahoo, now trying to bring on new partners. Their Live Search Cashback is an interesting attempt to make Live the homepage for people looking to purchase items on the Internet (although it’s far too easy to just use the cashback feature and ignore Live Search itself).
Now, Microsoft has acquired Powerset, a natural language search company. Powerset uses semantic web algorithms to produce more relevant search results. Keyword based search doesn’t often bring out the nuance in a query, and Powerset’s engineers are working to parse out the intent of a search query rather than simply matching up the search words to text and metacontent on a page.
There are a lot of good examples of the problems inherent in the current standards of search. Don Dodge has a great post on the subject, and he uses the example of “best of all time.” A keyword based search may pick out the word “time” and focus on it, but a semantic search would understand that the search term refers to a historic context.
As Dodge says, this technology manifests itself mostly in the way content is indexed. As Powerset indexes the content, they add their own metadata to it so that when a query is put in, the new metadata is considered as it relates to the text of the query.
Microsoft plans on implementing parts of Powerset’s technology by the end of the year. It’s good to see that they are taking an approach to combating Google that involves creating a better product. In the end, that’s the path to victory, and for the consumer, it means Google will have to remain innovative to stay in front.
Technorati Tags: semantic web, powerset, microsoft
