Microsoft buys semantic search firm
- Added:
- Jul 03, 2008
Microsoft has acquired search-engine startup Powerset to expand its natural search capabilities.
Powerset's engine allows users to form search queries as natural sentences, rather than stringing keywords together.
“We’re looking to add even more talented engineers to the San Francisco team to accelerate our shared progress,” Satya Nadella, Microsoft senior vice president, said in a statement.
Launched in May, Powerset’s “natural search” technology has been in the works for more than a year, after the company made an agreement with Xerox PARC to license its search technology.
For now, Powerset users are only able to search through Wikipedia, which has its own semantic algorithms.
A user searches Powerset by typing a regular question, such as “Who is winning the Giants game?” instead of the usual “Giants baseball score” keyword inquiry.
Microsoft recently abandoned an effort to acquire search engine Yahoo, and is said to be keenly interested in new search technologies.