Earlier this year, Powerset made a lot of noise by securing the rights to natural language technology from Xerox Parc as it set off to index the Web and building a search destination site.
According to the much covered VentureBeat story:
The move is significant because Google’s own technology, based on “page rank,” has been virtually replicated by other search engines like Yahoo and MSN, and so isn’t as difficult to emulate as it was a few years ago. Powerset could possibly steal a lead if it improves search results by a significant measure with natural language and simultaneously incorporates a near-equivalent to Google’s existing capabilities. Powerset has been hiring lots of Yahoo search experts and others, to help it do that.
That led me to ponder: should Powerset and Podzinger (now Everyzing) merge?
Today ZDNet’s Dan Farber reports that Powerset is out of stealth mode and the company’s ambition is “boundary-less”:
“We after after a pretty big goal–replacing the core of the search engine, the patents and technology are locked down,” said Steve Newcomb, a Powerset co-founder and COO, which won’t be open to the community until September.
I am certainly a believer that search is still very much in its infancy technology-wise, but from a business standpoint, it’s almost a fait accompli that Google will be dominant in it, much like Microsoft became dominant in software (related post: is Google the Standard Oil, AT&T or Microsoft of the 21st century?).
The main reason we think Google has checkmate the search industry, of course, has a lot to do with:
- distribution trumping technology in search these days
- advertising being bundled into Google’s core search offering
Of course, it is true that what made Ask Jeeves so interesting and promising in the late 1990s was its promise to deliver on natural search. But it should also be said that the failure to deliver on such promise is exactly what made Ask Jeeves crash and burn. Ask dropped that strategy - and the Jeeves part in its brand - and became a run-of-the-mill, standard search engine. Today’s it’s part of InterActive Corp. after Barry Diller acquired it for $1.85B in January 2005. We encouraged Mr. Diller to drop the $100M ad campaign and acquire companies, such as Powerset, instead. Read that here.
In other words, reinforcing our theme that search is the hubris of mankind on the Web, Powerset better be careful about its claims, and lord knows it’s aiming high. Problem is, it’s a lot of buzz and hyperbole right now. Let’s count the buzzwords (in bold).
From the same ZDNet article:
- Powerset leverages the wisdom of the crowds for development.
- “Imagine a mashup between Facebook, Digg and Google Apps, but you get to participate in the building of the products that sit on top of our platform. You log into a social network, like you would Facebook, and you get certified to be a Powerlabber. Once certified you can join different interest groups, such as travel, and participate in idea and mashup competitions. QA is embedded and its all bloggable.”
I know what you’re thinking: “but Ash, these are not buzzwords, these are massive trends that Powerset is embracing and leveraging.” Read on, please.
“We want as many people in Powerlabs to help us build and test the product. Powerlabs tells us when we are ready to go. We could have 50,000 people QAing our product,” he added. So far Powerset has 10,000 Powerlabs users. “Imagine how many widgets that could sit inside of Facebook, MySpace and even Second Life. It gives us the ability to launch with an extremely passionate set of people,” Newcomb said.
“We have people who were interviewing at Google, and now they would work for nothing at Powerset to be part of the company,” Newcomb said. “The passion is unbelievable. Powerset is ripping the core out again, like Google did, and they just want to be a part of it.”
Oh-oh, that last sentence is eerie: we’re basically reinventing the wheel, by jumping on board of a number of things that were hot and in vogue in 2004 (blogging), 2005 (social networks) and 2006 (widgets). Sure, these things are more pertinent today than ever, but folks, let’s get a grip. Let’s actually see it in action!
Like my concerns with Jimmy Wales’ Wikia search project, some of the loose arrangement will hamper its growth:
Regarding intellectual property for those contributing to Powerset, there may or may not be an agreement with those participating in Powerlabs, Newcomb said.
Powerset hopes that building a platform and attracting developers will save it from the fate of other search startups.
I’ve said this frequently, part of the reason some companies succeed online is the speed and focus of a very small core of developers: Yahoo!? 2 people. Google? 2 people. Facebook? 1 guy. See a trend. The wisdom of the crowds stuff is great in theory but tends to dumb and slow things down in practice. Oh, and please don’t mention Wikipedia, which is to some extent copied and pasted material from elsewhere from the Web. That’s not wisdom of the crowds, in my humble opinion.
As I continue to read, all I see are red flags:
”We are trying to challenge everything out there,” Newcomb said. He said many search companies had a 90 percent attrition in attention not long after their announcement. “After a few blogstorms they die–it’s the dead cat bounce model. We want to launch with super passionate people–David versus Goliath people and with the people who can build products off of our platform.”
”We are trying to challenge everything out there”? You sure that’s wise. Last time I checked MSFT too was doing that: Sony and Nintendo via XBOX; Apple and Sandisk via Zune; Google via Live.com; Yahoo! via MSN.com… I commend it for not sitting on its software business cash hoard, but I’m still curious if the “challenge everything out there” mantra works. Yes, that’s a bit ironic coming from me given the range of properties and applications we have, but beneath the surface, most of that all fits together. I guess, of course, Powerset would argue, so does their strategy.
Which raises a question: what is the strategy?
“Google is Goliath in this battle. Screw alpha, beta and blogs to launch–[Powerlabs] is the way to do it. The power of the blogosphere and the people active in our community is a big force, and it is a big deal to take on Google,” Newcomb said. “We are not anti-Google, we just believe the next decade is about computational linguistics.” However, Newcomb said he does “want to own the space.”
Effectively, Powerset is, if I understand this correctly, running with Wales’ idea of employing the wisdom of the crowds to scale (not in the open source context, since “patents and rights are locked down”). I’m not sure how well this will succeed, but despite our apprehension, we do with them well.
“Powerlabs will tell us when we are ready to go, and ready to build out the index,” Newcomb said. “We are in a financial position to wait until it is ready to go, and not a crap product.”
“We are betting that we win, but we don’t know, but we do know that search is going to get better because of it,” Newcomb said.
If that last part turns out to be correct, then we commend them for trying. There are good aspects to the potential of Powerset, but as Nitin Karandikar points out at The Software Abstractions in his thorough overview, we’re still talking potential. Tech Dirt seems to echo pretty what I’ve covered here, too.
“We are betting on our index,” concludes Newcomb.
Yikes. I give them a good chance of building a good product, but on the business front, it’s an uphill struggle. My gut says there’s a lot of bravado here to get a “too good to turn down offer” from Yahoo!, Microsoft, InterActive Corp., Time Warner AOL or News Corp.
Disclaimer: Our sister site MetaMojo.com is a vertical search engine. It’s got a place online, but we don’t for one second think it will own the space or take on Google. It will own the Mojo Supreme space, though, and that’s really all we think is up for grabs these days in search: your own backyard…
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