Semantic start-up takes aim at Google search
12 May 2008 | 12:19 BST
Know what I mean?
A SILICON VALLEY start-up has just unveiled a new search system which in time should make it possible for people to search the entire Internet using natural language phrases and questions, instead of restricting them to keywords. Powerset has launched its new tools on the online encyclopedia, seen by some as a microcosm of the Internet, Wickipedia.
What Powerset’s tools do, is they take words and sentences entered by a person in the search field and look for related concepts to those words, thereby expanding the search scope extensively, making search more flexible, and answers easier to find. In other words, it doesn’t tie you down to your keywords, it can figure out what you mean.
With its new flexible word in context and concept search, it looks like the small 60 worker, two and a half year old San Francisco based start-up company could be well on its way to becoming a major challenge for the likes of Yahoo, the Vole, Ask.com and even search engine giant Google.
An Internet analyst for Sterling Market Intelligence, Greg Sterling, told Reuters that "This could become the basis of a Google-killer". Sterling added that the big threat lay in the possibility that a company like Microsoft, which currently has a spare $44 billion burning a whole in its pocket after the Yahoo deal collapsed, could snap up Powerset, hence becoming a very formidable rival indeed.
But for now, the company says it is content with using Wackypedia as a “look what we can do, aren’t we clever?!” showcase, with aims to expand its operations to the CIA world Factbook, financial or patent filings and wackpedia-likes in the near future.
The company has also said that it will attempt to join forces with several other high-quality data sites where data can be organised in question and answer form or that is compatible with Powerset search techniques.
At the moment, Powerset is particularly focused on getting its technology perfected as well as properly up and running. This means that almost all its staff are either computer boffins or linguists, leaving little room for marketing execs or ad pushers, but this will not always be the case, sadly. The company has said that it eventually plans to sell advertising space which would display next to search results. Google, watch your back. µ
L’Inqs
Reuters
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