Where Google is a search engine, and Bing is a "decision engine," Ask.com seeks to be an answer engine. Ask thinks the future of search is in questions and answers. This means, you should be able to ask a direct question and get a specific answer, rather than pages of results, which can lead you to finding the answer on your own.
A new way of searching is on the way, and will come under the label Wolfram Alpha. This is a "knowledge engine" built by Stephen Wolfram, which allows users to ask questions and receive a single definitive answer rather than a page of results pointing to pages that may or may not have the answers they are looking for.
Satya Nadella, the senior vice president of Microsoft's Search, Portal & Advertising Platform Group, isn't afraid to admit that the current crop of search engines suffer from some problems. Nadella seems to be hoping, however, that his company's acquisition of Powerset will help it solve them.
Powerset, a company that focuses on “natural language search,” recently discussed its to-be-released-in-September search engine, and there’s some very interesting stuff going on. Very interesting, and very hard to understand.
Powerset has yet to launch, but a few sneak previews have shown some promising results; true “natural language” search appears to be well on its way.
Powerset Seems Powerful
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