Powerset introduces clever search engine
In a newly-opened online showcase, search engine specialist Powerset is now previewing a contextual search engine seen by some as a possible threat to Google, Yahoo and other major players through its support for “conversational phrasing.” Although right now, Powerset queries Wikipedia only, rumors are circulating that investment bank Allen & Co. is shopping the emerging natural language search engine to potential buyers that might even include Microsoft, which decided to drop its recent attempt to take over Yahoo. Unlike the search engines of Web sites like Google, Yahoo, and Ask.com, for example, Powerset does not rely on keyword searches.
Instead, users submit their queries as questions that don’t necessarily need to include keywords. Like traditional search engines the results are returned as URL links, often accompanied by pieces of text from the linked pages. With the Powerset search engine, however, the answer is often included directly within the search results. Users can expand the result to see the full text with pertinent sentences highlighted. Indexing the web is expensive, though, and Powerset’s way of doing it requires even more time and computing power dedicated to a web page. That’s why they say they aren’t indexing the entire web yet - the company has raised just $12.5 million. Powerset is has taken a lot of criticism for their goal of trying to redefine how people search the web ( including from us). But their lofty goals are what makes Silicon Valley so great - succeed or fail, Powerset is trying to do something pretty spectacular.
Source: Betanews, Washington Post
Even with the power of a outfit like M$ behind them the very nature of the backend database they need to build to start indexing the entire web still puts them years behind google.
neat web2 design
wikipedia already has its own search engine
This article is a breath of fresh air at RLSLOG.net. Very bold decision. Bravo. Brah-voh. *slow clap*
Searching without KEYWORDS? What’s the point - Its the keywords that define my search.
I don’t want answers to things I type in if those answers dont include my keyword search…
Am I missing something??
I just try it out… and its suckkks google rocks out my world
@5 Seeing how well AskJeeves faired with this, I can see this venture Doing a sort of beta period, where they try to be more AskJeeves than AskJeeves, waning in popularity when the technical difficulties of trying to search without keywords makes them AT BEST, no better than google or the others, then fading into obscurity (and probable bankruptcy), due to the inability of a machine to be able to handle the sort of nebulous phrases that anyone who would prefer a searchengine like this one would likely use, and their frustration with the probably useless (or hand-selected) results.
Edit: I went there and saw the site. LOL, it’s still keyword searches, just “who is” or “who did” or “what is” tacked on. So they basically made an AskJeeves that only searches wikipedia. Well, its their money.
#4 - OperaFan. That’s much the typical n0obish comment that you love making. If you aren’t happy here, please delete this site from your bookmarks and go somewhere where your comments are wanted. Dikhead!
It is interesting to use. I just tried it out with the question “why are we here?” and the third answer I received was “Halo 3″.
This may wind up being bigger and better than Google.
Funny. Allthought the question “What is The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything?” gives the correct answer, the second answer/link points to… Google!
@11: lmao
I dont think they can beat google in searching. I will not enumerate the reasons why. Its too obvious.
Do No Evil. Google Still Rocks!
I don’t trust a search engine that describes its search results as “factz”
who created man? one of the results of powerset is… is.. the GINGERBREAD MAN!!!
@8; Try “what did steven spielberg direct?” (link: http://www.powerset.com/explore/pset?q=what+did+steven+spielberg+direct%3F), and you will get a list of films he directed, it can do a lot more than just “what is”, “who is”, “where is” etc…
This site went into my favs anyway. I really hope there will be more to it than just wikipedia in the future.
This is just an idiot company dressed nice for M$ money.
www.dogpile.com is my nr one search tool
It’s not really a bad idea, but if you think about it, it doesn’t take much to make this happen. Just make the search engine look for important keywords. It’s definitely not gonna revolutionize the way anyone searches for information online.
@15
Would we have gotten result for movies he directed, but that didn’t have the words “Steven” “Spielberg” and “Direct” mentioned on the same page? I’m going to guess no. Unless they store words to make associations, but then we are limited to what they’ve thought of.
bv, thanks for dogpile
seems good, especially since it searches for everything using everything!