Microsoft to Acquire Web Search Developer
Posted on: Thursday, 3 July 2008, 09:00 CDT
Microsoft said it had agreed to buy Powerset, a fledgling company working on a new Web search that relies on insights from linguistics rather than simple keyword strings.
Satya Nadella, senior vice president of Microsoft's search, portal and advertising business, confirmed the purchase Tuesday after months of speculation that the companies were in merger talks. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Powerset's technology breaks down the meaning of words into related concepts, freeing users from having to type the exact words they want to find. This emerging approach to Web search, known as semantic search, has fascinated researchers for decades but has proved difficult to commercialize.
Making it possible to search the wider Web using conversational language is expensive, Mark Johnson, the company's product manager, said.
"Microsoft accelerates our ability to move Powerset to the entire Web faster than anyone could have imagined," he said.
The company, with a staff of several dozen, is one of a handful of Web search acquisitions by Microsoft, even as it has been frustrated in its pursuit of Yahoo.
Microsoft, the software behemoth, said in January that it was buying Fast Search & Transfer of Norway, a leading provider of Web search services used by businesses, for about $1.2 billion.
Yahoo, the No.2 provider of consumer Web search behind Google, rebuffed a $47.5 billion bid by Microsoft and another offer to buy Yahoo's search business for more than $9 billion.
Powerset, based in San Francisco, is one of a number of companies seeking to use semantic language software to improve on the current generation.
Microsoft said Powerset's software, together with similar semantic Web tools developed by Microsoft Research, can help it develop products that understand the intent of a user's word choices in each Web search.
"We know today that roughly a third of searches don't get answered on the first search and first click," Nadella said. "Usually searchers find the information they want eventually, but that often requires multiple searches or clicks."
Source: International Herald Tribune
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