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Microsoft buys Powerset, gets foot in semantic search door

arstechnica.com — Microsoft announced today that it has purchased natural language search startup Powerset in hopes of adding its team and technology to Live Search. The move is yet another attempt by Microsoft to chip away at Google's market share, but at least this one is centered around staying ahead of the competition... for now.

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  • mcm297, on 07/02/2008, -7/+13I like this acquisition. Powerset always had an interesting approach on "search", and it's going to take a whole new algorithm to dethrone the current "search king." M$ did more than just buy developers, developers, developers here...
    • whiteeagle131, on 07/02/2008, -1/+31Please don't call Microsoft = M$, it looks stupid and it doesn't add to the conversation, because I as many people, when this word shows up I stop reading. If you are open source promotor, then you look like those people who call it open sauce. If you can, just please call it MS, MSFT or even Microsoft.
      Regards
      • mrgreenjeans9, on 07/02/2008, -15/+3M$ here makes perfect sense though. instead of innovating in-house, they just go out and buy another company to add to their capabilities. sure, many companies do this but you'd think with all the 'talent' that M$ has under their roof already they'd be able to come up with something themselves. the symbol 'M$' simply denotes this practice.
      • Thinkman, on 07/02/2008, -2/+10If that's the case then I guess we should call google g%gle because instead of just depending on larry and sergey to come up with their innovations, they try to hire away the top 1% of everyone else's developers.

        It just isn't relevant to the conversation.
      • AVigorVermin, on 07/03/2008, -2/+1and cue instant digging for the bashing of M$
    • FredFredrickson, on 07/02/2008, -2/+3I agree... I really wanted to take your comment seriously, but the '$' in 'MS' just makes it sound stupid. 'M$' is for PlayStation 3 fanboys.
  • mathcreative, on 07/02/2008, -0/+10I hope this would be good for the competition between Google and Microsoft. I just hope google doesn't 'just' copy something like powerset's technology.
    • 1legend, on 07/02/2008, -0/+4I read in another article (found on digg's great recommendation engine) that Google would fundamentally have to re-index the whole web (as MS will have to do). This technology requires a clean start and can't use the existing search engine indexes as a source.
  • rowjimmy, on 07/02/2008, -4/+4in the staff meeting today when scott prevost made the announcement (and repeated on both M$ and PS blogs) it was continually stressed that microsoft wants to preserve powerset's culture, their team, the brand, etc - it'll be interesting to see in the upcoming year(s) how this actually turns out, and additionally how m$ plays with some of the major OSS work done by some of the powerset team (HBase, Hadoop, etc). Nonetheless, and while I'm certainly not a fan of microsoft in general, it'll certainly be great to see what powerset can do with near-unlimited resources...
  • irarcy, on 07/02/2008, -2/+1i like powerset more during startup rather than startout
  • bmcnally, on 07/02/2008, -0/+4Interesting how they are keeping the team together in San Francisco. It seems as if Microsoft will use them as a more research oriented group or a parallel development team in order to preserve a lot of the thought processes that went into the creation of their engine.
    • rowjimmy, on 07/02/2008, -0/+1*fingers crossed* powerset has a great collection of people right now, hopefully it'll stay like that
  • watklax, on 07/02/2008, -10/+15Face it Microsoft, you will never win the search engine battle.
    • FutureGuy, on 07/02/2008, -0/+4your's truly,
      Google
    • FutureGuy, on 07/02/2008, -1/+2your's truly,
      Google
    • FredFredrickson, on 07/02/2008, -0/+4They don't need to win it to make it a good venture. They just need to stay in the battle in the first place.
  • 1234qwer, on 07/02/2008, -5/+0Paging Bill Gates, where arey you?
  • ruddy, on 07/02/2008, -6/+7let'$ get thi$ $hit out of our ***** $y$tem already.
  • cli006, on 07/02/2008, -1/+18I can't remember the last time I heard someone say, "Let's search for it on MS Live!"

    "Google it" on the other hand has become an everyday term.
    • B1663r, on 07/02/2008, -0/+5For text searches, and that is a huge market.

      On the other hand, if you are searching for a particular video or image, Microsoft is the clear leader right now. Not even close really. If microsoft can get the same type of inteligence in their text searches going, that they have in their image and video searches, and google is unable to respond, google is toast baby.
    • FutureGuy, on 07/02/2008, -0/+3And I would have thought XBox was electrostatically shielded box to stack ones precious tape collection of a certain genre.
      Back where I came from people "Xerox" on Canon copiers.
      • FredFredrickson, on 07/02/2008, -0/+2Do they use a Kleenex while they do that?
  • lynx44, on 07/02/2008, -0/+1Sounds like interesting technology. I'm not sure how Powerset actually works, but I always thought it would be a good idea if Google would also search on synonyms rather than only the keywords you entered. Obviously the logic would have to be more complex so that the results were actually relevent. Hopefully this will push search engines to innovate, it can get kind of annoying sometimes when you're searching for something and you have to try a number of different phrases the keywords correct.
  • bryanwebster, on 07/02/2008, -5/+4Powerset were full of promises but ulitmately failed to launch or deliver.......they should fit in well at Microsoft.
  • mcrules, on 07/02/2008, -6/+4Why can't Microsoft stick to making OS's instead of worrying about what is happening with Google/Yahoo/Whatever. They are a classic case of 'Jack of all trades, yet the master of none'. If Google had 100% market share of the search engine market, how would that hurt Microsoft Vista (or Windows 7) and MS Office? Answer, it wont. They should be more worried about GNU/Linux or Mac OS or even OpenOffice. Silly billies!

    In addition, do they say that they want to preserve the companies culture because they want to lose the stigma of 'Embrace and extend?'
    • ExRe, on 07/02/2008, -0/+1Over specialize and you die with your market.

      Just because your company focuses on one specific thing does not mean it is better than it would be if you had other projects and teams.
      • Thinkman, on 07/02/2008, -1/+2Corporations extend their market into other areas because interop is king . . .

        And what if the OS starts to live in the cloud . . .

        And if MS should stick to OS, why aren't you complaining that Google should stick to search? WTF about Google Apps?
    • Thinkman, on 07/02/2008, -0/+1And interop is king these days . . . .

      and what if the next big OS lives in the cloud . . .

      and if Microsoft should stick to OS, shouldn't Google stick to search? WTF is Google Apps then?
    • tnoy, on 07/02/2008, -0/+1Microsoft is smart, thats why.

      There is a metric ***** of money to still be made in online search, and Microsoft isnt going to sit idly by at watch. Its the same reason they still make a web browser. They don't give a ***** that you're using Firefox or Opera, they just want you to use IE because the default home page is MSN.com and the default search uses Live. Using both MSN.com and Live search makes them money.

      If you want to talk about focusing on your core function, the fact that Google apparently isn't already moving heavily into semantic search technologies is rather shocking. Keyword based searches are going to die off quickly after semantic searching gets its foot in the door.
  • hugoguzman, on 07/02/2008, -6/+3If anyone is going to develop semantic search, it will be Google. They've got the computing power that startups - and even MSN - can't muster.
    • duckyinc, on 07/02/2008, -0/+1hmm you brain needs more semantic because semantic search is about algorithms not servers
    • FredFredrickson, on 07/02/2008, -0/+1Not to mention, Microsoft might be getting beat at the internet search engine game right now, but you'd better believe they've got the computing power to do whatever they need / want.
  • lewhich, on 07/02/2008, -4/+2I just did a search on Powerset for my company name and it returned some bogus results without my company name.
    • rowjimmy, on 07/02/2008, -0/+3is your company on Wikipedia? Powerset currently limits its semantic engine to wikipedia, and really to data from freebase and/or wordnet... it's still a project in development, not a fully fledged natural language search engine
  • EEdesigner, on 07/02/2008, -7/+436 minutes ago "Face it Microsoft, you will never win the search engine battle. ..." Microsoft cannot win any battle when the outcome is based on originality, quality, or usability. They simply are unable to create anymore (if they ever did). Is the talent there? Yes. Is the management there? No. Microsoft is the true home of Dilbert.
    • Thinkman, on 07/02/2008, -1/+5Hating Microsoft is sooooooo 1990s.
    • LMN8R, on 07/02/2008, -1/+4Office 2007 is an incredibly innovative product, is incredibly useful, and is incredibly successful.

      As for the rest of what Microsoft does, I think their success demonstrates perfectly how overrated innovation and originality is. Far better from a business standpoint to make what already exists better than to crash and burn doing it all on your own. It doesn't get you Cool Points (tm) with the Cool Kid Crowd (tm) on the internet, but it sure does rake in billions.
  • nicolaa, on 07/02/2008, -0/+1Does anybody know what technology is behind powerset? Is it RDF/OWL?
    • discoloda, on 07/02/2008, -0/+1All I know is that some or all of it uses Erlang. and possibly on several EC2s. A guy on #erlang is a developer of PowerSet, he was happy with the acusition.

      Microsoft now uses Erlang! /me hugs Erlang
  • eighties, on 07/02/2008, -0/+1Welcome to yesterdays news, today!
  • heavymeta, on 07/02/2008, -1/+3I've tried Powerset and it barely worked, even on Wikipedia, which is a fairly controlled space. Live is bad and I imagine this acquisition will only make it worse.
  • brianpeiris, on 07/02/2008, -0/+2I really didn't expect this, mainly because Powerset is such a fledgling technology. I hope this is a smart move on Microsoft's part and not just an "If I have it, no one else can have it" play.
    On the other hand, the Live Search Cashback program was the lamest attempt at user satisfaction I've ever seen, so I'm not holding my breath for anything spectacular.
  • Awspire, on 07/02/2008, -1/+3Microsofts E-mail is pretty damn good, and now that you can sign up with a Live account, you can now have .live instead of that stupid ass .hotmail. Microsoft's spam filters need to be worked on to compete with Google. Microsoft's windows Live mail app, which is free, is friggin fantastic, and works great with Live e-mail, even g-mail.

    Microsoft's other free services such as Live SkyDrive (5GB of free online storage), Live Maps, MSN Messenger, and Worldwide Telescope are ages ahead of Google's alternatives.
  • jls33fsls, on 07/02/2008, -0/+2So, how much did they buy it for?
  • justiceforsome, on 07/02/2008, -0/+1Congratulations Barney Pell
    Your sale of garbage to MS will go down in history as a testament to your skills as a salesman and microsoft's monumental incompetence....and for those without a clue, powerset's amazing search engine happens to be an example of how NOT to create a semantic search engine...if you can actually call it that...(get this...they happen to not filter out the common words that google does so actually it does bring up different results...unusable and no better then google , BUT HEY THEY ARE DIFFERENT .....WHOA!!!! let's give them 100 mill for that.....unbelievable...

    This sale was for a sucker. And they landed the biggest one. Congratulations are in order.

  • YodaJones, on 07/03/2008, -0/+1Microsoft buys something else they can't make on their own. Boring and buried.
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