Powerset Search Engine: The Google-killer is here! Or is
it?
Another natural language search engine plans a launch.
Will Powerset be something in the era of Google?
Powered is the new search engine that might just change the rules of the "searching" exercise. Reports conclude that it is as impressive as anything they have seen before.
So what’s so different? Well, for starters Powerset let’s people use natural language when they search on the net. Today, search engines, including Google ignore the natural language. You need to modify, change your language a bit while addressing the search engine. There are articles and sites offerings tips on 'how to' search the net.
The people behind Powerset believe that natural language search is important in order to communicate the intent and meaning. They gave an example to make their point clear. Imagine the following scenario- - “book for children”, “book by children”, and “book about children” are all equivalent to “book children” to search engines today. The problem? There would not be any way for us to properly express the query" books by children" without using the natural language.
Today, search engines are just like database repositories. It is not able to give you a valid search with the use of natural language. It just ignores the natural language stuff you type in. Reuters on the other hand, is using pretty good at using the natural language and doing well for itself.
But the question remains, how powerful is Powerset to defuse the Google bomb? Lets take a look.
The thing is even if your technology is better; you can not compete with the likes of Google, just because you have a great search engine. Makes no sense at all. Search engine market is nothing less than an online media market of sorts. Google has the set the bar very high, and it does a lot more then algorithms running in a data center.
The very first fact that Google has monstrous infrastructure, which is distributed across 450,000+ servers across the globe. By doing this, Google decreases router and switch delays and delivers faster performance to users worldwide. The search is fast and the products are great.
This "natural language" rant has been going on for the last 10 years! Companies come out with natural language search as the "Google killer" solution. History is repeating itself, something similar is happening with Powerset.
Users today want your product to rollout your quickly, so that they call play around with it. Or else you end up like Kozuru 2.0, which squandered the initial hype. The search engine field is littered with a number of companies who already tried this stuff, but did not work.
The people at Powerset have an argument. They believe they are challenging conventional wisdom. They also believe that’s what Google did. Well not really. Goog egot into search when the rest of the world thought portals were the wway to big money, and google came up with a brilliant search engine based on the principle of PageRank and kept their search page clean. They didn;t go the portal way, and when bandwidth wasn't as abundant as now, a fast loading search page became popular by word of mouth - and their ranking system based on link-power helped them maintain their superiority in pure search.
Even though there were natural language search engines available even then, they did not succeed - and Google's search efficiency soon made everyone forget it.
Google succeeded because it made changes did not require any changes on the part of the user. Google by the way is not totally ignoring the idea of natural language search. They have a fair idea, and they have acquired a few companies and hired a few employees with backgrounds in semantics and language.
Users have somehow have been trained to search the "Google" way. There were no instructions from Google, how to go about searching the net. People search the net, the way they want to. And right now they use only a few words.
Lets see back and see if Powerset succeeds in changing these user habits. Right now, Powerset is looking for money. Let me rephrase it, Powerset is looking for BIG money. The company is trying to raise $10 million on a $20 million pre-money valuation. And the best bet is of course venture capitalists.
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