On the rebound from Yahoo, Microsoft buys into semantic search instead

by Davey Winder

Friday, 04 July 2008

Page 2 of 3 How does Microsoft, and its acquisition of Powerset, fit into the semantic web road map? Well, it will argue that today roughly a third of searches are not answered effectively on the first search or the first click. Multiple searches and multiple search results work for most people most of the time, but they are far from being perfect. In searching for perfection, Microsoft wants to adopt a semantic web approach to the problem of differences in phrasing or context between a search terms and web data. To get around the huge chasm between human understanding of linked concepts and the inability of the web to do the same. "These problems exist because search engines today primarily match words in a search to words on a webpage" Nadella insists "We can solve these problems by working to understand the intent behind each search and the concepts and meaning embedded in a webpage." Which is where Powerset comes in with its natural language processing expertise. It already has the technology to parse natural language questions and return topic clusters with a contextual base. Although Microsoft nor Powerset are saying how much money was on the table, in the last few months online rumour has abounded which seemed to focus on the figure of USD $100 million (AUD $104 million). Some are now reporting this figure as fact. If this turns out to be anywhere near the right ballpark, then it seems to me that Microsoft has got itself a bargain. Let's face it, anything that can help Live Search to both parse better at the front end and cluster results better under the hood has got to be money well spent. I think John Blossom has hit the nail on the head though, when he asks why if Microsoft is so interested in natural language search it didn't buy Answers.com instead? "With millions of pre-formed questions already in its WikiAnswers database many natural language questions map very neatly to its answer sets" Blossom argues "In other words, sometimes the best answer to a full-sentence is a person who understood the question in all of its semantic details and has already provided the answer." Does this mean that Microsoft will bounce back to bite Google in the search market? Read on to find out... CONTINUED << First page <   1 2 3 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

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