Microsoft Buys Would-Be Google Beater
Saturday, July 5th, 2008Microsoft plans to spend just over $100 million to acquire semantic search engine company Powerset.
Powerset’s semantic or “natural language” technology aims to deliver search results based on what search engine users are really looking for, due to making meaningful connections between the words typed in by such users.
While Google is said to be using semantic technology to a limited degree, it has generally dismissed Powerset’s approach. Consequently, Google’s search results are still mainly based on the individual words typed in by its search engine users.
With the popularity of Microsoft Live lagging significantly behind Google and Yahoo, Microsoft’s purchase of Powerset is undoubtedly a bid to increase its share of search, based on delivering better quality search results. However, many believe that while theoretically appealing, semantic search is practically impossible to implement in reality.
