• Reuters, Monday, May 12, 2008 11:45 AM

This is cool: A new Google challenger on Sunday unveiled tools for searching Wikipedia, the online community encyclopedia, using conversational phrases instead of keywords. Powerset's technology breaks down the meaning of words and phrases into concepts, the idea being to free users from the burden of typing exact words to find material. It also helps them find more detailed answers to questions rather than returning isolated links.

Will "concept search" replace "keyword search"? Not anytime soon, but if the technology takes off (it is only being used on Wikipedia thus far), Powerset could become an attractive acquisition target for the likes of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. Reuters said the company aims to partner with other high-quality data sites where information can be organized into a question and answer form. These could be any Wikipedia-like vertical sites covering finance, law, politics, science, etc. Powerset will eventually sell advertising, although the 60-employee company currently has no advertising staff and just a small marketing and support staff.

Search industry analyst Greg Sterling said it would take years for Powerset to search the Web on the scale of a Google or Yahoo. "What I don't know is how Powerset will perform on the wide open Web. In a sense, this is a massive prototype using the relatively structured information of Wikipedia. It is difficult to compare to what Google has built," Sterling said.

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