I don't mean to say "I told you so," but Microsoft's reported interest in purchasing natural language search engine Powerset for $100 million seems to go along with my recommended strategy for Microsoft. (See It's Search, Stupid.) Even though I'm the Yacrosoft blogger, I see how big of a headache the integration of overlapping services would be at Microsoft and Yahoo!. Add to that the ridiculous amount of money Microsoft was willing to pay for Yahoo!, and you must wonder whether Microsoft couldn't find a more productive way to spend its tens of billions of dollars.
As I had said in my very first blog post ever, Powerset will offer Microsoft the one thing in search that will give it a fighting chance against Google: DIFFERENTIATION. Nobody wants to use an also-ran search engine. Google was the first search engine to solve the great search spam problem that popped up in the late 90's. It's going to take something pretty compelling to overcome Google's overwhelming internet-savior-become-more-powerful-than-God status. Having a natural language search engine will be a step in the right direction--and at a nearly 500-fold discount.
2 comments:
A contrarian opinion: natural search doesn't matter since Google does a good job of teasing out your intent from caveman-like queries. Depends on the specificity of your search, I suppose, but I don't think the <1% of the people that may choose natural language search over raw power will tip anything in Microsoft's favor.
Whazzmaster,
Excellent point! I would expand on your point to say that natural search already exists to a certain extent with Google's great keyword search technology. Even further, much of the keyword content on the web is in natural language format. For example, FAQ-style text on websites is already primed for common queries on Google. I usually find what I need, too, without the help of some fancy start-up technology like Powerset's.
Anyway, my point is this: Microsoft needs to distinguish itself. Even if the strides they make don't improve on Google's service, MS would do well to at least signal a difference from Google's run-of-the-mill search.
With that said, Google is trending toward a natural monopoly over search. I won't bet on Live Search making ground with or without Powerset. However, it's Microsoft's duty to at least give it a shot. $100 million is a small price to pay for that shot, even if it's a long shot.
Thanks for your thoughtful comments!
Best,
Tom
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