(Update: See our subsequent funding story here)
We promised to bring you more on Powerset, that secretive company that wants to better Google with a new kind of search.
Powerset is going after the holy grail. It is called “natural language” search, or understanding language as it is actually spoken — and that is something that has defied everyone until now, even the Google guys.
Take, for example, if you type “Books by Children” into Google’s search box. Google essentially drops the word “by” and looks for all the pages that are relevant to “books” and “children.” That’s because the English language is so idiomatic that no engine has been able to understand meaning within sentences. Some companies, most famously Ask Jeeves, have tried. You prompted Ask Jeeves’ engine with a question ending with question mark, but as soon as your question got remotely complex, Ask Jeeves broke down • because its engine could only answer specific questions its engineers had prepped it for.
Google, while acknowledging that natural language is a big goal, hasn’t made very big advances in the area. This makes sense, because people have become trained to use “a grunting pidgin language,” as Powerset’s Barney Pell (pictured here) puts it. Pell calls this “Keyword-ese.” Many search engines recognize some advanced query syntaxes — for example to find Web pages that don’t carry certain words, or that have two words within a certain number of words of each other, and so on.
But people have a hard time remembering these advanced syntaxes, and each search engine has a different syntax. Finally, Google’s core engine has been built around this keyword-ese language, and it is hard to change all of the layers that have been built around it.
Which is where Pell and co-founder Steve Newcomb come in. We talked with them at their offices in Palo Alto. Pell is an enthusiastic guy, and has a rich career developing intelligent systems, but also trying to make them work in the market. Pell has just posted about the start-up on his blog here. Newcomb is the operations guys, previously having worked at voice recognition company Promptu.
Search is so crucial in our lives, Pell says, it is like oxygen. “It is a metabolic function,” Pell says. And yet, search is surprisingly underdeveloped.
Powerset is trying to solve the natural language problem, by making its core engine understand concepts of time, place, sentiment and other intent. But Pell and Newcomb stop short of going into the details of their computational linguistics approach, saying it is sensitive. They are also giving no dates about when it will be released.
They insist, however, that it is a radical improvement. So when Craig Silverstein, first employee of Google said it will take many years to get a computer to a point to understand exactly what people are searching for, Powerset thinks differently: “It is not a long way away,” says Pell. “This is not a change of some technology out on the periphery,” adds Newcomb, “we’re changing the core of the engine.”
He says such a transformation hasn’t happened in eight years, since Google invented “page rank,” a concept that ranks a page higher in relevance depending on how many people are linking to it. So while Google has bought companies like Applied Semantics to help find “themes” on web pages, Newcomb shakes his head, and says Powerset wants to do much more. “We’re switching the core out,” he says, adding that when you do that, you’re also going to fundamentally change the image, video, blog and all other searches that Google is doing. Google may be caught in an “innovators dilemma,” co-founder Steve Newcomb says, because it can’t turn on dime.
So, is this so much hype?
They point to the credibility of their investors, who include PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, analyst Esther Dyson, Reid Hoffman and the Amidzad fund.
And when you talk with Pell, you get a sense for why he may be as prepared as anyone to do this. While an undergraduate at Stanford, he spent much of his time working at SRI’s “natural language group.” There, back in 1988, he began working on the problem that restricts search engines from relying on natural language: In natural language systems, you have to teach the system every single word. If the system, doesn’t know a word, it crashes. So Barney went to work taking the words the system did know, and bridged the gaps formed by the words it didn’t know, which he said created better results. Later he built a language engine that talked with a office processing system — this way, a company could ask the system say, “What were the top five products ordered over the past week?” and the system could spit the results back in the form of a table. His PhD was in machine learning and games.
Then he worked at NASA, and architected the artificial intelligence system that was embedded in the $200 million Deep Space 1 mission. For a week, his system operated the mission autonomously. In 1999, he left and joined the internet revolution, working with Stockmaster.com, and then at Whizbang Labs, which used machine learning and statistical natural language processing to build advanced search applications. His company built Flipdog, a site that extracted job listing information from millions of sites on the Web • which was sold to Monster.com.
Later, exhausted by the post-bubble era, Pell returned to NASA and managed an 80-person operating division deploying information technology for NASA’s missions. When the market recovered, Pell did a brief stint at Silicon Valley venture firm Mayfield, which he left to start Powerset.
On the one hand, Pell and Newcomb have detractors. “We do have a lot of skeptics,” Pell said. But he and Newcomb also believe they are on to something: “We show the demo to people, and their jaws drop, and they say ‘Holy (expletive),’” says Newcomb. “They say: ‘I’ll never use the old search engines again!’”
Update: See search expert Danny Sullivan’s scathing critique of Powerset ambitions.
50 Comments
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Startups.in/India said:
People are so googlified that they have begun to accept that google is the oracle of search. (the same way people thought about AltaVista before Google debuted). Point being one should never underestimate new players. Who knows Powerset really could be the next power in the search space.
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Danny Sullivan said:
Wow — so natural language searching is going to be the killer knockout? The search space is littered with companies that have promised this was somehow going to be a great advanced but never went everywhere.
The reason is simple. You don’t need to do a lot of conceptual analysis when the typcial search query is two to three words long.
Take “books by children.” What exactly is the by doing conceptually? Nothing. When Google drops it, you’re getting stuff mainly about childrens books. Understanding by helps you know that you want not children’s books but books BY children. But I don’t need some big natural language to alter that. I just need to put all three words into quotes, and the “conceptual” query becomes clear.
Heck, AllTheWeb used to kick in auto phrase searching like this in the past. And if I want to do concepts, I could shove things like Clusty’s topics up top.
Honestly, the Powertech story I’ve heard so many times before, including the reputable investors or others that are supposed to make you sit up and take notice (think Accoona and Bill Clinton as spokesperson — that was only last year, and Accoona has gone nowhere).
Maybe I’ll make the time to highlight some of the ones that pitched and disappeared over the years, becase Powerset pretty much sits right within that model. It’s probably energy better spend other ways, however.
As always, I could be wrong. Powerset might be the right tech and the right tech. But it’s such a well worn story. If they don’t realize how many others have made this pitch already, that especially makes me wary that they’re going to be successful at all.
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km4 said:
iPhrase Technologies ( which was acquired by IBM last Nov ) offered both natural language and guided search ( like Endeca ).
It’s primary use was to improve e-commerce sales, online service and support, and call center productivity.
According to IBM, iPhrase’s technology is compliant with IBM’s Unstructured Information Management Architecture. It will be used to help customers and partners discover inherent meaning from a wide variety of data.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
While the iPhrase purchase seems to fit in with IBM’s information on-demand strategy, what’s less clear is what the future will be for iPhrase’s customer self-service applications.
BTW, IBM and Google were purportedly teaming up to provide search capabilities for corporate databases but I haven’t heard much more on this for quite some time.
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Opo Jac said:
I do not agree with what you said:
“Take, for example, if you type “Books by Children†into Google’s search box. Google essentially drops the word “by†and looks for all the pages that are relevant to “books†and “children.—Because, Google gives: 3,530,000 results for “books for children” with ” ”
and for books for children with out ” ”
Google gives: 283,000,000 or 80 times more…With the spreading of “natural language search” the searcher will be delivered from using Keywordese that implies that the weight to achieve “correct search results” will be on the Web Owners that will have to implement correctly the “natural language strings” in their sites.
If when you search for “Books by Children” and you see results from “Books on Children” it means that the Web Owner has not implemented its site in the best way.Web owners will have to replace “keywords optimization” with “natural texts optimization”.
If it is like that, then Google can sleep for a while…
Jac
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Joel Pobar said:
A similar story over at http://www.lexxe.com, a Sydney based NLP search startup. I believe they’ve recently secured first round funding.
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Derrick said:
“Books by Children” is a good google search. Try it and you find exactly what you’re looking for.
I need a better example of google’s failings, one that actually fails.
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Matt Marshall said:
Danny, I’d really like to see the list of failed experiments along these lines.
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Joe said:
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guy grimland said:
i have wrote on Linguistic Agents, which is an Israeli start-up company, that enables search engines to develope technology that serves as a bridge between Free Flowing Language and Formal Language, thereby enabling machines to understand and act upon free flowing language constructs. they use nano Syntactic methode. you should check them out in the future.
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John Furrier said:
Matt,
The list of failed search startups are long… -
Don Dodge said:
Why the stealth?… natural language search has been around for more than 10 years. I was a director of engineering at AltaVista almost 10 years ago. Over the years I have seen lots of “new” approaches to search; semantic search, Q&A search, contextual search, visual search, social search, iterative search, personal search, and lots of others. None of them have caught on. The list of failures is long…but nobody writes about them because they are sad, uninteresting stories.
My advice is that Powerset, and other “alternative” search engines focus on enterprise search or specialized vertical search markets. Their unique technologies will be more appreciated and valued by those customers. If they are really stuck on doing consumer search than they should try to specialize in News Search, People Search, Medical Search, or some other vertical where their power can be an advantage.
I wrote an indepth blog on this subject today http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2006/10/powerset_natura.html
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Matt Marshall said:
John, to be clear, i mean natural language failures. I know there are lots. I’m asking Danny for the list. It should be eye-opening, as Danny knows this area better than anyone.
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Matthew Gertner said:
I’m very much in agreement with Danny on this one. The problem with natural language querying isn’t so much that English is idiomatic. Understanding any natural language is a huge challenge because they are ambiguous and imprecise, requiring real-world knowledge to interpret. Take the classic example: “Fruit flies like honey.” You need to know something about fruit flies and honey to understand that the ambiguous word “like” is being used as a verb rather than a conjunction.
Despite the enormity of the challenge, over-the-top predictions have been made since the 1950’s about the imminent ability of computers to interpret natural language. This is why the term “artificial intelligence” ended up with a bad rep (though this has been tempered somewhat in recent years as computers have finally started to do some stuff which can reasonably be described as intelligent).
So it’s certainly correct to be skeptical about Powerset’s claims. It’s much easier to understand language in a limited domain than in the wild, woolly world of the web, and I can easily imagine them wowing folks with a few canned queries that they know work well. This is very different from performing well in a real-world environment where people are entering all kinds of crud and expecting to get back useful results.
That said, it’s always possible that these guys have found a clever way to achieve substantial improvement in search result quality using NLP, without having captured the Holy Grail of actually understanding queries and webpages, boiling them down to some formal semantic representation and matching them up on that basis (which frankly isn’t possible today if for no other reason than that our computers aren’t nearly powerful enough). If so, that’s huge… Google huge. But I, for one, will believe it when I see it. :-)
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Jill said:
The example chosen, “books by children”, is a truly stupid search query, being so broad that the user would naturally get back dreck from even the best search tool. The problem is that we expect one search tool to be appropriate to every task put to it. By and large, that’s is factory style search [one size fits all; any color as long as its black]. No serious searcher is well served in such an environment.
If you want to prove the superiority of the tool, use some examples that have some strength to them, such as:
books about Jane Austen’s depiction of clergy in the Georgian church
or
information useful in sizing the Asian market for “X” product
Creating robust search isn’t (or shouldn’t be) just about finding the best deal on a car or pulling up a corporate web site. Robust search needs to satisfy complex information queries as opposed to finding what will suffice.
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Danny Sullivan said:
Hey Matt–
Sorry on the delay. Wrote up my own post, then had to run for a flight to Frankfurt for the book fair over there. Hate to point over to my post by dropping a link, but it’s the fastest way to get you to that list:
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Brian Maser said:
Danny and Matthew… I am one of the hopeful believers that search can be improved by true linguistics (with the right approach to solving the core problems of search)… I have been with Cognition Technologies, Inc (Cognition.com), which was formerly known as MeaningMaster, for the last three years. I only mention the name because Danny wrote about MeaningMaster today in his blog (and you should know that we changed our name).
I have been assisting the company to work with early adopters and power through the proof of concept phase - to see what users like and don’t like about our linguistic search technology AND I have experienced much of what you both are saying (regarding user search habits and the two-three word query)..
With that said, as soon as I show or tell these “typical users†to just ask the questions they want answered AND not worry about the breaking the engine with a longer more specific query, they quickly change their old habits… Also, you would be surprised how much relevant data is not being found by the common search engine, because those engines do not recognize the many other ways of saying that same two-three word concept…
You are correct to say that most what you hear about NLP and linguistic engines is a joke, but there are some of us that may have the foundation of where search needs to go…. Only time will tell and I would love to continue this discussion offline… BMASE
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ronald said:
Context, context, context.
But where does it start? How is context created? Certainly not on some obscure Web-server out of thin air.
All these people trying to do NLP without breaking the Microsoft monopoly are just lying to the investors. You can get to context if you run your applications in context, which requires a different OS and different applications from what we have today. Which also requires a different way of writing applications and ….Come on guys this is the 21th century, and you think in terms of the 18th century. Oh and if you really believe your brain does computable linguistic processing, please don’t drive when I’m around.
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BGP said:
Even if this works as advertised (or hyped in this case) I want to see how well this works once all the SEO’s start gaming it. Its on thing to make it work in a controlled environment, another thing when millions of marketers are reconfiguring their web sites to manipulate the results.
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Clay said:
The key question to ask here is: What problem are they solving? Is there a problem with Google’s results and relevance? Enough to make a massive change in consumer behavior and overcome their substantial barriers to entry?
NO.
Relevancy of results is not a problem the masses have with Google. If Powerset is playing the relevancy game they’re seven years too late. Read Danny’s post…
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Joe Hunkins said:
Matt keep up the Powerset reports - even these comments are super interesting!
New users are less sophisticated than old ones, so if (of course this is a big *if*) Powerset really does crack the natural language barrier as well as offer results that are better than Google the shift to use it will be spectacularly fast. I’m floored how few seem to understand this.
Experiences users *will move* to the best search, and inexperienced will follow or already be there due to natural language advantages. It’s that simple.
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Green_Monkey23 said:
Sorry for your time…. Why i can’t see images on this resource?
My Browser is: Opera.
Thank you. -
Antonio Valderrábanos said:
Speaking of running software in this area, we have developed a natural language interface for search engines for Spanish, not for English (although it’s under developement and will be out in the near future). You can test the Spanish version running against a complex and popular document collection in Spain, the BOE or BoletÃn Oficial del Estado.
The demo is available at http://www.bitext.com, Demos section; or at http://demos.bi…t.com/BOEBitext.
This demo runs with (the outstanding search engine) dtSearch. We plan to release soon another demo where we integrate our NLP software with MSN index and API.
For those of you with some competence in Spanish, please, try it and let us know.
Thanks,
Antonio -
Shakir Razak said:
I don’t think people realise, but this hs nothing to do with P.C. searches, but the future with limited visual interfaces and real-estate.
I.E. Personal communicators and Cars, etc.
Yours kindly,
Shakir Razak
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jimekus said:
I found this page looking for a Google NLP API. I was looking for it because I recently had to tell off Google for a bad design change that they made to their USA search page. The reply that I got back appeared to me and others here to have been written by a human and so I continued to correspond with The Google Team until a solution was reached and both parties were satisfied. Later on, after careful analysis, I suspected that I was the only human in the loop and that it was a computer program that I was communicating with. This was because of the way that certain things were rephrased. I grant you that this was not a response to a generlaized search query and dealt with a specific area regarding a Help topic that quite a few others had had problems with, but nonetheless, given that there was a specific database of responses that they could call upon to craft their emails, I thought they did pretty well.
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Krish said:
Think it’s a waste of time debating whether POWERSET would get to replace GOOGLE. If POWERSET passes beta and shows some traction, GOOGLE’s gonna buy it out. Why fret…?
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panikeeer said:
I didnt find thing that i need… :-(
[url=http://google.com]google[/url] -
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Bye -
Long_double said:
Nice Site!!! (p)
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W,Gharbiyeh said:
Hi,
I have couple of questions:
Who should we contact regarding finance issues for my new Conceptual Web Search Engine?
Is there a way to propose our technology to interested staff .
Thanks
W,Gharbiyeh CEO
GET-Jo
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HelloWorld said:
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Ramilka said:
You have a great web site!
http://allio.orcon.net.nz/1/ -
Memory4less said:
Well I would like see the competitions here with the google as Google is Globaly search Magnetism and a search habit still there are more and more cores need to be open Google recently partnered with Global SchoolNet to invite teachers and students to use Google Docs & Spreadsheets collaborative software in a project to brainstorm strategies for combating global warming. Children of all ages from more than 80 schools around the world participated, and on November 27th we took out a full-page ad in USA Today to put their ideas in the spotlight. Without further ado, here are their top 50 ideas:
# Include global warming/climate change in school curricula (as part of National Science Standards), so when the students are in charge they can make educated decisions.
# Increase availability of low-interest Energy Efficient Mortgages to support homeowners who increase the energy efficiency of their homes.
# Put light sensors in all office and school buildings so all lights go off when the rooms are empty.
# Require that all products contributing to global warming be marked with a specific color (e.g., chemical pesticides could be marked with a red sticker for being extremely dangerous to the environment).
# Use less paper; use the back of the paper to print on or write on; use recyled paper.
# Plant more trees to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
# Teach recycling techniques in classes and school-wide programs.
# Make recycling mandatory in all public facilities, such as schools, parks and beaches.
# Do public service announcements on TV featuring celebrities promoting carpooling, walking, riding bikes, using public transportation, conserving electricity and recycling.
# Give grants and tax credits to companies that invest in alternative, sustainable, emission-free fuel technologies while ending such subsidies for fosssil fuel production.
# The media should conduct interviews of legislators to help the public become aware of their ability and willingness to help solve the problem.
# Replace incandescence light bulbs with fluorescence light bulbs.
# Restrict the use of chemical fertilizer in agriculture.
# Provide incentives and policies to encourage car makers to make more fuel efficient cars.
# Protect wetlands and preserve more open space.
# Provide tax incentives for regular recyclers and car poolers.
# Use solar panels in the construction of new homes and office buildings.
# Substitute local community transportation fleets with hybrid vehicles.
# Require that car dealers hand out fact sheets that inform car buyers about the pollution levels of different cars.
# Send scientists to talk about global warming in schools. They can bring hands-on activities so students feel more involved.
# Unplug all electronics from the wall when they’re not in use.
# Have another Global Warming Student Speakout in one year - to see if any of these ideas have been implemented.
# Raise mandatory emissions standards for cars and other vehicles sold in the US.
# Use solar power in the day and use electricity at night when needed.
# Give tax rebates for using solar power.
# Congress should ratify the Kyoto Agreement.
# Establish off-shore wind farms - saves land space and produces reliable power.
# Levy higher taxes on companies that pollute the air.
# Wait until you have a lot of clothes to wash before using the washing machine.
# Provide tax incentives for companies that create Hybrid cars. That will reduce the need for oil.
# Schools and businesses should be fined for not having recycling bins available to the people on their premises.
# The media should tell us about what is really going on with global warming. We don’t think that we have all the information we need.
# At the end of the weather forecast, report “CO2 emissions levels today…” or comparative average temperatures (i.e., this year’s temperature as it compares to the past several years).
# Lead by example and convert 50% of government vehicles to environmentally friendly cars by the year 2020.
# Place recycling bins throughout the city wherever there is a trash can.
# Require companies to limit the amount of packaging an item can have and it must be recyclable.
# Block bills that cause more damage to the environment.
# Media could reduce advertising costs for alternative energy products to inform and increase sales in these areas.
# Keep your tires fully inflated to improve gas mileage.
# Replace old appliances with Energy Star appliances.
# Promote awareness of local recycling centers.
# Require college and high school students to take a global warming class.
# Give tax reductions to public transportation users.
# Protect our oceans - prevent plankton in the ocean from dying.
# People running for elections should use email, radio and other media to campaign and stop using so many paper signs and flyers that use up our natural resources and then get left out and become pollution.
# Reuse newspapers as wrapping paper for gifts.
# Enforce laws about littering.
# Use less electricity, turn off the TV, read books, walk, run, bike, surf, play tennis.
# Business should require employees to telecommute several days a week.
# Provide scientists appropriate resources to help them research the future of energy and the freedom to explore innovative ideas. -
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mahaveer kale said:
google and other search engine displays a wrong links. please remove this limitation from your powerset search engine and show that images which is exactly typed by the viewer and user.and send mail to my address for when you launching the site?
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I’ve got an Amazon gift certificate burning holes in my pocket,
and I want to get the most bang for my buck.Enter the Secret Amazon Web Pages:
This is where you’re going to find the “latest sales, rebates, and limited-time offers” from
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You can find the same good discounts here as you would in hidden Deals, although some
Fridays you can really get lucky and make off like an Amazon bandit - I’ve seen discounts
there as low as 75% off sticker price. -
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You can find very good discounts here, although some Fridays you can really get
lucky and make off like an Amazon bandit - I´ve seen discounts there as low as 75%
off sticker Price. -
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Idetrorce said:
very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce -
Andy said:
Oh, and did not know about it. Thanks for the information …
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Jitendra said:
Love to see it in public beta…cool tech.
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24 Trackbacks
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[...] Anyway, I look forward to seeing Powerset in action, as I’m a believer that you have to get into the game and play in order to learn, make progress, and be in a position to identify the true market for your offering.  While I agree with Danny Sullivan’s comments under the latest VentureBeat post about Powerset, and also believe that Powerset may have missed the mark they are espousing, there may still be some solid applications of their technology which will take on a life of their own. Knowing that Barney is a genuine and solid entrepreneur, I also know that he will find these opportunities and know how to make the most of them. [...]
2:31 pm
Uge 40: Google, Powerset & Avisen.dk « intaneti said:
[...] Powerset Det har ikke skortet pÃ¥ nye udfordrere til Google’s dominans indenfor internetsøgning. Adskillige nye søgemaskiner er blevet lanceret med forhÃ¥bninger om at kunne tage markedsandele fra Google - ofte bygget pÃ¥ ny ‘revolutionerende’ søgemetoder der har lovet bedre søgeresultater. Ingen har dog endnu for alvor kunnet tage kampen op med Google. Men nu skulle den være der - the Google killer. Powerset er navnet pÃ¥ en ny søgetjeneste, som der har været en del hype omkring i ugens løb. Powerset er bygget op omkring ‘natural language’ search og skulle eftersigende give nogle imponerende resultater. Powerset er stadig pÃ¥ test stadiet og er derfor ikke tilgængelig endnu, men folk der har prøvet den er i følge VentureBeat meget imponeret. “They say: ‘I’ll never use the old search engines again!’†[...]
8:54 am
Will Powerset Pull a Google? » JenIT said:
[...] I haven’t seen a demo of upcoming search engine Powerset yet, but reportedly many people who have are impressed, saying they’d never use Google again. [...]
7:50 pm
天眞》宛若一切都是为幸ç¦è€Œç§¯æ”’,视为开端。 » æ®è¯´å°†æ‰“è´¥googleæœç´¢çš„æœç´¢å¼•æ“Ž-Powerset said:
[...] 以下摘录部分网å‹çš„评论,更多的留言请到venturebeat: I haven’t seen a demo of upcoming search engine Powerset yet, but reportedly many people who have are impressed, saying they’d never use Google again. [...]
9:22 pm
VentureBeat » Powerset gets $12.5M at whopper valuation, to go after search holy grail said:
[...] The company is controversial because it claims it can do “natural language” search, the holy grail of search that most experts have dismissed as impossible. See our previous story here about the company. [...]
12:04 pm
Tecnorantes » Dinero para un “supuesto” Google killer said:
[...] Me entero a través de Gurusblog (excelente blog por cierto) de que Powerset, un supuesto Google killer, ha levantado 12.5$ millones en su primera ronda de financiación, sobre una valoración de 30$ millones. Al parecer todo ha sido gracias a “angel investors”, algunos de los cuales son muy conocidos y con bastante peso en este “mundillo”. [...]
8:59 am
Anima ex Machina » Blog Archive » Powerset against Google? in search for the search grial. said:
[...] http://venturebeat.com/2006/10/04/powerset-that-secretive-little-search-engine-company/#more-2087 http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/10/05/will-powerset-pull-a-google http://blog.lorenzothione.com/ http://www.barneypell.com/ [...]
6:00 pm
ResourceShelf » Want to Demo Powerset Technology Before Launch? It’s Time to Register! said:
[...] is a “coming soon” (when? not sure.) natural language search engine that has received a solid amount of attention to this point. Receently, both the Powerset home page and blog have put the word out [...]
10:34 pm
startupulse.com » Blog Archive » Powerset said:
[...] Technorati - Techcrunch - Venturebeat - Read/Writeweb - Profy - Business2 - Silicon Valley Watcher - San Francisco Chronicle - New York [...]
1:30 am
Weekly Roundup, October 6, 2006 : Exclusive Concepts Blog said:
[...] Powerset, the secretive search engine using natural language search. [...]
3:49 pm
SF Beta » Blog Archive » SF Beta Welcomes Powerset said:
[...] Beta welcomes Powerset to demonstrate applications built on its natural language search platform. Some who have seen the demo have called Powerset a potential “Google-killer.” After months [...]
5:19 am
techcrunch » Blog Archive » Will Powerset Pull a Google? said:
[...] a demo of upcoming search engine Powerset yet, but reportedly many people who have are impressed, saying they’d never use Google [...]
9:07 pm
Alt Search Engines » Blog Archive » Powerset Launches into the Search Space! said:
[...] Language Search” Just two days later, VB posts a lengthy update, too long to republish now. Here is an excerpt: More on Powerset, the secretive search engine. By Matt Marshall October 4th, 2006 We promised to [...]
9:00 pm
9月森林 » PowerSet said:
[...] Language Search” Just two days later, VB posts a lengthy update, too long to republish now. Here is an excerpt: More on Powerset, the secretive search engine. By Matt Marshall October 4th, 2006 We promised to [...]
3:32 pm
» Microsoft acquister said:
[...] sembra che PowerSet abbia sviluppato un motore di ricerca semantico che usa il linguaggio naturale meglio di quanto sia in grado di farlo [...]