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"Understanding" Search Engine Enters Public Beta

Posted by kdawson on from the do-what-i-mean dept.

religious freak sends word of the public beta of Powerset, a closely watched San Francisco startup that promises an "understanding engine" to revolutionize Web search. An article in SearchEngineLand points out that Powerset is reaching higher than for mere "natural language." Techcrunch has more details and analysis. For the beta, Powerset makes available all of Wikipedia to search — not all the Web. It's said that their understanding engine required a month to grok Wikipedia's 2.5M articles. The Web is currently at least 8,000 times as large.

4 of 192 comments (clear)

  1. Next step.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Since Powerset can only search Wikipedia, the logical next step is to put the entire web on Wikipedia. Who's up for the job?

    1. Re:Next step.... by maglor_83 · · Score: 5, Funny

      I think we need to split it up by domain name. I'll start with wikipedia.org

  2. The Web is currently at least 8,000 times as large by nog_lorp · · Score: 5, Funny

    Any day now, Wikipedia will surpass The Web's growth rate, and set a course for the day when Wikipedia will be BIGGER THAN THE WEB.

  3. Re:But it doesn't give results any differently by glittalogik · · Score: 5, Funny

    I asked it a question I got in a trivia contest - what countries have four-letter names? (There are 10, and google's first link is to a list of 'em)

    Powerset's first response? "Fuck."

    Funny, that was my response too, but at least I got 5 or 6 of them first...