New type of search at Wikipedia
A small company called Powerset is developing a form of what is called “semantic” search. Semantic search involves not just words and phrases but the actual meaning of the search terms. A beta search facility from Powerset is now being used at Wikipedia. There are always rumors about Microsoft buying things these days and one possible acquisition target is said to be Powerset. Webware gives a tour of the search facility at Wikipedia and says:
Amid speculation that Microsoft is looking to make an acquisition, Powerset launched a public beta of its Wikipedia search engine. It brings a new, rich semantic dimension via natural language query processing to Wikipedia that greatly improves the search and reading experience.
The company calls it a first step in changing the way users search and consume Web content. “It’s a complete shift. You see this and you want to experience all content in this way,” Barney Pell, co-founder and CTO of Powerset, told me. “And, as an introduction, it will drive huge investment in semantic and linguistic technology, just as investments were made in information retrieval and scalable databases in the past.”
For a somewhat different perspective, read the New York Times Bits post that concludes:
But Powerset remains a long way off from its promise and faces a seemingly intractable problem: for a very large fraction, if not the vast majority, of searches, keywords work just fine.
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