Powerset Goes Live to the Public
Simon has written a few times here about Powerset, a developing search engine that attempts to analyze web pages by looking at their meaning rather than just as a set of keywords.
Well, the site has finally gone live this week. So far, it indexes only a small set of pages – those found in Wikipedia and Freebase. They have plans to index more data sets in the near future.
The site is getting quite a bit of publicity for a search engine – see articles from ABC News and the NY Times.
The consensus seems to be that the technology is pretty interesting, but is not that useful so far. The Times suggests the major problem is that for most people, keyword searches are working just fine. Rumours are already swirling that Powerset will be bought by one of the big search companies who may be in a better position to bring the technology to a broader user base.
Note that you don’t need to use a question to get value out of Powerset. Try typing in just a topic like Jon Stewart or Magna Carta and note that you’ll get a selection of Factz pulled from across Wikipedia. Also, try navigating to our enhanced Wikipedia pages.