Without a press release in hand, I’m feeling slightly cautious about this. But VentureBeat – and just about everyone else – is reporting that Microsoft is purchasing semantic search engine Powerset for $100M+ in a deal that will be announced next month. TechCrunch, cautious after all the Yahoo!/ Microsoft waffling, I suppose, makes a point that the deal is not yet set in stone and could still fall through.
I wrote about PowerSet back in early May and I rather liked it. At the time, I called it the evolution of search and not a Google Killer. I still hesitate to call anything a Google Killer, but I do believe that Google needs to invest some more time and money into evolving their own search past keywords and into semantics. As the Web evolves, Google needs to come with it.
I think the possible purchase of PowerSet is a smart move for Microsoft. If you recall, PowerSet currently only searches Wikipedia with a detailed, contextual search. It takes a fair amount of microcomputing power for PowerSet to index a page. With Microsoft behind them, coming by that power might just get a little easier. If this deal goes through, I imagine one of two things could happen: PowerSet could get swallowed up and lost in the Microsoft behemoth. Alternatively, Microsoft could really work with PowerSet and use it to vastly improve Microsoft’s own search engine, which currently leaves a lot to be desired.
7/1/08 UPDATE: The deal was officially announced today. According to Powerset:
Powerset will continue to operate much as we currently do, working in the same building, with the same organizational structure, and with the same uniquely talented and growing team. We’ll continue to tackle the hardest problems in parsing, semantics, ranking, indexing, scalable computing, user experience and all of our other specialties. But now we’ll do it with the support of Microsoft and the vast resources of the entire Live Search team.
Now Powerset will have the money and resources and only have to fight the red tape and politics that come with a big company.
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