"Understanding" Search Engine Enters Public Beta

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.

My first search

[Anonymous Coward]

"No results found for naked pictures of Natalie Portman. How does that make you feel?"

Next step....

[Anonymous Coward]

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

The Web is currently at least 8,000 times as large

[nog_lorp]

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.

Jargon pisses me off...

[KGIII]

If I hear the word "grok" one more time I'm gonna have to kill someone...

Re:The Web is currently at least 8,000 times as la

[nog_lorp]

Party pooper.

Re:I'm Unimpressed

[MillionthMonkey]

I asked it "who won the election in 2004?" and it understood the question, in a way:

The current mayor is Jardir Silva Vidal who won the election in 2004 against Reino Martins de Oliveira

Obviously still buggy.

[ScentCone]

Your tests are interesting, but you're not really parsing the responses in the right context. They're problematic. Keep in mind this understanding engine understands the world in a way that was hatched out in San Fransisco.

Who is David Bowie? I trust that it came back with, "aka Ziggy Stardust, normal family guy"

Who played the villain in the first Die Hard? Well, obviously, the villain is "capitalism."

Billie Jean King and Madonna ... like I said, it's San Fransisco

Who was the organist for The Beatles on Abbey Road?

You had it at "organ," and it got distracted. What they need is some dev guys from Toledo to collaborate, and provide a little cognitive counterweight to the understanding engine. OK, maybe not Toledo. Maybe Atlanta.

Re:Next step....

[maglor_83]

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

Re:My first search

[i_liek_turtles]

I don't know, but I did pull up a Southern cooking website!

Re:The Web is currently at least 8,000 times as la

[Molochi]

Dear Captain Obvious,

        Please send this fine fellow your password for future posts.

Re:Jargon pisses me off...

[Molochi]

Grok.

Grokgrokgrok.

Pics or it didn't happen.

Personally I hate all made up words

[Infonaut]

grok is just the beginning.

I hate all made up words. Database, modem, gigabyte, daemon, ethernet... they all suck. And the word suck sucks, too. Bring me back to the days when we all communicated with grunts, before all of this linguistic b.s. started.

Re:But it doesn't give results any differently

[mrbluze]

I asked 'Where do babies come from' and it just gave me back a bunch of articles with that string somewhere in their text.

Funny, when I was a boy I asked my father the same thing and he gave me a few articles with pictures of women wearing string. My conclusion: It's amazing what can be done with just a few bits of string.

Re:But it doesn't give results any differently

[The Great Pretender]

I tried "What are anal warts". Google gave me a response faster than I could start and stop my timer, with the second answer being Wikipedia. Powerset is still, hold on..., yep still hung up on the question.

Oh man. it's down.

[redtuxrising]

Anybody got Google cache for this new search engine?

Re:I'm Unimpressed

[textstring]

Wrong. The correct answer is "What do you mean? An African or European swallow?", when a search engine gets that right then I'll be impressed.

Re:But it doesn't give results any differently

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of us are hung up on the question. So apparently it understands the question.

Re:But it doesn't give results any differently

[glittalogik]

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

Powerset's first response? "Fuck."

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

Finally, a definitive answer!

[hereschenes]

Who shot first? [powerset.com]

Asking about earthquakes while in China

[Lost Penguin]

Your screen goes black; "Don't Panic"

Re:I'm Unimpressed

[AlexBirch]

You need to use the Canadian method. Ask "who won the election in 2004, eh?" and this comes to the top: http://www.powerset.com/explore/semhtml/2004_United_States_presidential_election_controversy,_voting_machines?query=who+won+the+election+in+2004%2C+eh%3F [powerset.com]

Re:I'm Unimpressed

[bytesex]

Did the filesystem kill his wife ?

Re:My first search

[Mr. Bad Example]

> "No results found for naked pictures of Natalie Portman. How does that make you feel?"

Petrified.

Impressive

[mrrudge]

Q: What the hell is a 'factz'
A: Did you mean 'What the hell is a fact?'

Quite