Powerset is the name of the company which has the very ambitious plan of creating a search engine that will be able to compete with Google. To do this it has turned to Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). PARC is a subsidiary of XEROX that specialize in licensing patents and technology to other companies and it has a broad assortment of technology, some of which Powerset is interested in. The two of them have also spent tons of money on further developing this technology known as “natural language” technology and they hope to offer a service which is more nuanced than other search engines of today. “Natural language” is namely all about making computers understand how our human languages works.
This means that instead of using keywords for searching we can simply ask the search engine a question. If you want to know who founded 3DFX you simply ask: “Who founded 3DFX?” There have been a lot of talk about this technology and its use in search engines, but no one has been able to take it all the way to the end zone.
A lot of investors have shown interest in Powerset’s project and quite a lot of money has been invested. Even if Powerset is a bit cocky and is aiming high, it tries to keep the expectations as low as possible since there is still some length to go before it has a working product.
“Today’s popular search engines are limited in terms of functionality and interaction with the user. Natural language represents the future of search, and the new paradigm in human-information interaction,” commented Mark Bernstein, PARC President and Center Director. “The challenge to process and understand natural language has required many years to address, as technology has evolved to enable new capabilities. We’re pleased to work closely with the exceptional team at Powerset to bring this capability to search. Powerset’s leadership and engineering expertise are key assets in helping to deliver this technology to consumers.”
