Powerset Launches

Powerset, one of the most talked about startups in Silicon Valley, launched tonight. I'm guessing they chose late Saturday to make sure the server load would initially be fairly small as there will likely be a surge of activity on Monday.

The initial Powerset search is restricted to Wikipedia pages but it gives insight into the approaches to semantic search that are driving this company.

Barney Pell, a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence, is considered by many to be Powerset's key strategic advantage. He stepped down from top leadership several months ago in what the company said was restructuring as they got closer to launch, though critics suggested it was because Powerset was failing to deliver.

See for yourself -is Powerset the next Google?

Powerset Part Two

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.

Berners-Lee: Semantic Web May Displace Google

Tim Berners-Lee, the top candidate for "inventing the internet", noted the coming power of the semantic web in a recent interview. Berners-Lee gave the following provocative example of the kind of functionality we'll see when our online data stream starts to link with other data, and applications are built that can leverage all this new connectivity:

"Imagine if two completely separate things — your bank statements and your calendar — spoke the same language and could share information with one another. You could drag one on top of the other and a whole bunch of dots would appear showing you when you spent your money.
"If you still weren't sure of where you were when you made a particular transaction, you could then drag your photo album on top of the calendar, and be reminded that you used your credit card at the same time you were taking pictures of your kids at a theme park.

These technologies are not far away, and in fact it is conceivable that the above application will be available within a few years using some form of mashup of QuickBooks, Flickr, and a calendar program with a robust API. However the full blown semantic web that Berners-Lee envisions is likely several years away, as data portability, tagging, mashups, and general web development mature into the new internet mix.

Critics of the semantic web as the next big thing may point to heavily funded semantic search startup Powerset which showed early promise for delivering remarkable search results from a very powerful natural language interface, but has so far failed to deliver on the promises and appears to be suffering from management and technology challenges.

Berners-Lee Interviewed by Times Online