Microsoft and Powerset confirmed a deal that had been rumored for a few days. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the purchase of Powerset by Microsoft does offer some interesting insight into how Microsoft plans to grow its search business. Powerset is a pioneer in semantic search. Semantic search attempts to understand the meaning of the words users enter into the search engine, rather than simply targeting keywords. According to a story from IDG News Service, Powerset is currently testing a semantic search engine, in part using technology licensed from Xerox’s PARC subsidiary. That technology creates a semantic representation of Web pages by parsing each sentence and extracting its meaning.
This should help users find relevant Web pages even if the Web page and the user are using different keywords. The semantic Web has been called Web 3.0 by some. If Microsoft can be a leader in semantic search, that could give it the disruptive technology it needs to unseat Google from the search throne.
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