Search StartUp To Challenge Google

[peter_d]

How often have we heard that before. Still, we haven't heard it for, oh, at least a few weeks now, so what the hey.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i...qdVRWYKXDQIwdw

After nearly two years of hushed development, Powerset is finally providing a peek at a "natural-language" technology that is supposed to make it easier to communicate with search engines.

Powerset's algorithms are programmed to understand search requests submitted in plain English, a change from the "keyword" system used by Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and the owners of the other leading engines.

Sounds good. We'll have to take their word for it, though as it isn't live:

http://www.powerset.com/

[EricBlackwell]

I signed up just to see what they are up to and take a look. I think that natural language search is not quite here yet, but it is always good to stay abreast of issues.

Bottomline is that search engines --like any other website-- run on traffic and relevance. Relevance begets mroe traffic. I am not so sure that they will be able to stay afloat now that Google is a verb, but I applaud anyones effort at innovation.

If they succeed, it is likely that they will simply get bought out anyway...(grin)

Eric

[peter_d]

Heh - right.

I don't think search is a technology problem in the current environent. The problem is retaining and building audience, clicks and page views. If someone does come up with significantly better search, then, as you suggest, they'll get bought up - as a defensive move, if nothing else.

[moramata]

Building another search engine is futile at this point in the evolution of web. The best option is to build application based on existing platforms - google, facebook, etc.