Web 2.0 Startup playmaker Mike Arrington was very skeptical of Powerset during the early phases, but he appears to have had a change of heart after attending a demo of the semantic search engine, scheduled to launch soon. Today in TechCrunch Arrington quotes his reaction to a demo last month and writes (with a few qualifications I’m not noting):

.. when I tested the service I had something very similar to the “Aha!” feeling that ran through me the first time I ever used Google. In short, it is an evolutionary, and possibly revolutionary, step forward in search…

This is the kind of praise that Powerset has had from several key valley players so it is not surprise that even before launch they are already on the sales block hoping for a huge play from Microsoft who is especially flush with cash after the withdrawl of Microsoft’s offer to buy Yahoo. Although a pricetag of $100,000,000 has been bandied about Arrington is likely correct that this will be considerably too low for a company that – if Powerset lives up to all the hype and all the promise – could become worth more than Google or Microsoft as the next search giant.