WebProNews

Natural language/understanding engine going for $100 million

A reported price tag of $100 million will deliver the much-hyped Powerset and its natural language search technology to Microsoft.

Matt Marshall at VentureBeat said he's learned Powerset will go to Microsoft in a deal to be announced in July. The price tag should top $100 million.

Powerset has been something of a media darling through its development. When the site finally debuted, it arrived as a Wikipedia search engine. "I beg that you forget you ever heard 'natural language' being associated with Powerset. That's not really describing what they do in comparison to regular search engines," Danny Sullivan said in May after it launched.

So Powerset turned into more of an "understanding engine," able to automatically provide something of a summary of a topic on Wikipedia, it's not much different than what Wikipedia's human editors already do on an ongoing basis, with results one can find already in major search engines.

Back in September 2007, when the buzz reached a new level for Powerset, we were convinced it was destined for a payday rather than a space as a stand-alone competitor:

If there’s a company positioning itself to be flipped on launch, Powerset sure looks like the top candidate. Fan the hype, build the buzz, show some controlled demos to people who’ve bought in to the message, profit.

Though the $100 million sounds impressive, Marshall said it's not up to what investors hoped to see. "The technology has taken longer to develop than expected," he wrote. "Powerset was also burning cash at a fast rate, and so a purchase at $100 million is considered a safe result for an area that is also seeing increasing competition," he said.