Powerset's technology breaks down the meaning of words into related concepts, freeing users from having to type the exact words they want to find. This emerging approach to Web search, known as semantic search, has fascinated researchers for decades and will be in the hands of Microsoft.SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz)
said on Tuesday it had agreed to buy Powerset, a start-up that is
working on a new class of Web search that relies on insights from
linguistics rather than simple keyword strings.
Satya Nadella, senior vice president of Microsoft's Search, Portal,
and Advertising business, confirmed the purchase in a statement,
following months of rumors that they were in merger talks. Financial
terms were not disclosed.
Powerset's technology breaks down the meaning of words into related
concepts, freeing users from having to type the exact words they want
to find. This emerging approach to Web search, known as semantic
search, has fascinated researchers for decades but proved frustratingly
difficult to commercialize.
"Powerset has always been a small company with big dreams, with the
ultimate goal of changing the way humans interact with computers
through language," Powerset product manager Mark Johnson wrote in a
company blog post announcing the deal.
The start-up, with several-dozen staff including academic experts in
the field of natural language processing, is one of a handful of Web
search acquisitions by Microsoft, even as it has been frustrated in its
pursuit of Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).
The software giant said in January it was buying Norway's Fast
Search and Transfer ASA, a top provider of Web search services used
inside businesses, for about $1.2 billion.
But Yahoo, the No. 2 provider of consumer Web search behind Google Inc (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), rebuffed a $47.5 billion bid and a partial deal to buy Yahoo's search business for more than $9 billion.
WHADDYA MEAN BY THAT?
Powerset technology looks beyond words to try to understand
conceptual relationships to get closer to what a user is looking for,
analyzing sentences and whole documents to do so.
The San Francisco-based company is one of a number of start-ups
seeking to use semantic language software to improve on the current
generation of search dominated by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and
Baidu.com (BIDU.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) to a lesser degree.
Powerset has mounted public demonstration projects to showcase the
power of its approach to search. In May, it began offering a way of
searching millions of entries in Wikipedia's online encyclopedia,
helping users find detailed answers to questions rather than isolated
links requiring more research.
Making it possible to search the wider Web using conversational
language is expensive, Johnson said, adding: "Microsoft accelerates our
ability to move Powerset to the entire web faster than anyone could
have imagined."
Microsoft said Powerset's software, together with similar semantic
Web tools developed by Microsoft Research, can help it develop products
that understand the intent of a user's word choices in each Web search.
"We know today that roughly a third of searches don't get answered
on the first search and first click," Nadella said. "Usually searchers
find the information they want eventually, but that often requires
multiple searches or clicks."
Powerset, a 2-1/2-year-old start-up, has licensed natural language
processing technology and related machine processing methods developed
over three decades at the Xerox PARC research center in Silicon Valley.
(Editing by Braden Reddall)
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