Microsoft Buys Powerset

• Posted by Brent on June 27, 2008 00:13
• Comments (1)

I just read this morning that Microsoft has purchased semantic search engine Powerset for $100 million +.  Powerset attempts to uncover the meaning of an entire search phrase and return results bases on its analysis of that phrase. It's different than Google search, which looks at individual words and not the phrase as a whole.

 The Powerset technology has only been available to the public for about a month, and currently only searches wikipedia. An SEO's dream right?  Hopefully Microsoft can take the Powerset technology and improve it's own search engine with it.

 Another interesting note, Powerset is currently monetized with Google Adsense. Wonder how long that will last?

As a final thought, in my opinion, Microsoft would be wise to work on branding their search engine. A lot of people I talk to who are casual internet users (and not people who breath http packets like me) know nothing about live.com. They aren't even aware it exists. Given Microsoft's $50 billion, how about dropping another $100 or $50 million and do some real branding of live.com ? Their SERPs aren't bad, it's more about consumer perception.