Microsoft Aims to Acquire Powerset
Friday, June 27th, 2008After its loss with Yahoo!, Microsoft has been looking for a way to compete with search engine giant, Google. Recent reports show that Microsoft is going for an acquisition with Semantic Search’s Powerset. Powerset is said to be innovative in its natural language search, which boasts the ability to search for terms, understanding what the user needs (as opposed to Google, which lists the highest ranked websites first). Currently, however, Powerset is limited to only searching Wikipedia pages. Nevertheless, Microsoft brings financial backing to Powerset (the acquisition is priced at $100 million), that can ultimately expand Powerset to different possibilities.
Much speculation remains on whether or not Microsoft’s plan to acquire Powerset will give the company the edge to take on Google. After all, sources state that Powerset has been around for several years, but still has not taken off. The acquisition, which is said to take place next month, will change both Microsoft and Powerset.


