Powerset (company)
| Founded | San Francisco, U.S. (2005) |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, U.S. |
| Parent | Microsoft (as of August 1, 2008) |
Powerset is a Microsoft owned company based in San Francisco, California that, in 2006, was developing a natural language search engine for the Internet.[1]
Powerset was working on building a natural language search engine that could find targeted answers to user questions (as opposed to keyword based search). For example, when confronted with a question like "Which U.S. state has the highest income tax?", conventional search engines ignore the question phrasing and instead do a search on the keywords "state", "highest", "income", and "tax". Powerset on the other hand, attempts to use natural language processing to understand the nature of the question and return pages containing the answer.
The company was in the process of "building a natural language search engine that reads and understands every sentence on the Web."[2] The company has licensed natural language technology from PARC, the former Xerox Palo Alto Research Center.[3]
On May 11, 2008, the company unveiled a tool for searching a fixed subset of Wikipedia using conversational phrases rather than keywords.[4]
On July 1, 2008, Microsoft signed an agreement to acquire Powerset for an estimated $100 million.[5]
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[edit] Powerlabs
In a form of beta testing, Powerset opened an online community called Powerlabs on September 17, 2007. Business Week said, "The company hopes the site will marshal thousands of people to help build and improve its search engine before it goes public next year."[6] Said The New York Times: "[Powerset Labs] goes far beyond the 'alpha' or 'beta' testing involved in most software projects, when users put a new product through rigorous testing to find its flaws. Powerset doesn’t have a product yet, but rather a collection of promising natural language technologies, which are the fruit of years of research at Xerox PARC."[7]
Powerlabs' initial search results are taken from Wikipedia.[8]
[edit] People
[edit] Barney Pell
Barney Pell (born March 18, 1968 in Hollywood, California)[9] is co-founder and CTO of Powerset. Pell received his bachelor of science degree in symbolic systems from Stanford University in 1989, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and was a National Merit Scholar. Pell received a Ph.D. in computer science from Cambridge University in 1993, where he was a Marshall Scholar.[10] He has worked at NASA, as chief strategist and vice president of business development at StockMaster.com (acquired by Red Herring in March, 2000) and at Whizbang! Labs. Prior to joining Powerset, Pell was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Mayfield Fund, a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley.[11] Pell is also a founder of Moon Express, Inc., a U.S. company awarded a $10M commercial lunar contract by NASA and a competitor in the Google Lunar X PRIZE.[12]
[edit] Steve Newcomb
Steve Newcomb was the COO and co-founder of Powerset. Prior to joining Powerset, he was a co-founder of Loudfire, General Manager at Promptu, and was on the board of directors at Jaxtr. He left Powerset in October of 2007 to form Virgance, a social startup incubator.
[edit] Lorenzo Thione
Lorenzo Thione (born in Como, Italy) is the product architect and co-founder of Powerset. Prior to joining Powerset, he worked at PARC in natural language processing and related research fields. Thione earned his master's degree in software engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.[11]
[edit] Ronald Kaplan
Ronald Kaplan, former manager of research in Natural Language Theory and Technology at PARC, serves as the company's CSO.[13]
[edit] Investors
Powerset attracted a wide range of investors, many of whom had considerable experience in the venture capital field.[14] The company received $12.5 million in Series A funding during November 2007, co-led by the venture capital firms Foundation Capital and The Founders Fund.[15][16][dead link]
Among the better known investors:
- Esther Dyson, founding chairman of ICANN, founder of the newsletter Release 1.0 and editor at Cnet
- Peter Thiel, founder and former CEO of PayPal
- Luke Nosek, founder of PayPal
- Reid Hoffman, executive vice president of PayPal and founder of LinkedIn
- First Round Capital, seed-stage venture firm
[edit] References
- ^ Helft, Miguel (2007-01-01). "In Silicon Valley, the Race Is On to Trump Google". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/01/technology/01search.html?ex=1168232400&en=ad47077c00fe61f4&ei=5099&partner=TOPIXNEWS.
- ^ "Powerset Blog: Powerset launches Powerset Labs at TechCrunch40". Archived from the original on October 30, 2007. http://web.archive.org/web/20071030095833/http://blog.powerset.com/2007/9/17/powerset-launches-powerset-labs-at-techcrunch40. Retrieved 2008-03-04.
- ^ Helft, Miguel (2007-02-09). "In a Search Refinement, a Chance to Rival Google". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/09/technology/09license.html?_r=1&oref=slogin.
- ^ http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-powerset.html?_r=1&oref=slogin[dead link]
- ^ Powerset Blog : Microsoft to Acquire Powerset[dead link]
- ^ Hof, Robert (2007-09-17). "Powerset: Move Over, Google". Business Week. http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/sep2007/tc20070917_676790.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_businessweek+exclusives.
- ^ Helft, Miguel (2007-09-17). "Powerset to Skeptics: Try Us". The New York Times. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/17/powerset-to-skeptics-try-us/.
- ^ Kopytoff, Verne (2007-09-17). "Power is turned on, a bit, at Powerset". SFgate.com (San Francisco Chronicle). http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=19&entry_id=20341.
- ^ "Barney Pell's Personal History". Archived from the original on October 14, 2006. http://web.archive.org/web/20061014112552/http://ic.arc.nasa.gov/projects/Executive/team/barney/history.html. Retrieved 2008-02-16.
- ^ "Barney Pell's Weblog". http://www.barneypell.com/. Retrieved 2008-02-16.
- ^ a b "Powerset Founders". Archived from the original on 2007-10-27. http://web.archive.org/web/20071027074129/http://www.powerset.com/team. Retrieved 2008-02-16.
- ^ "MoonEx aims to scour moon for rare materials". Los Angeles Times. 2011-04-08. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-moon-venture-20110408,0,1715396.story. Retrieved 2011-04-10. "MoonEx's machines are designed to look for materials that are scarce on Earth but found in everything from a Toyota Prius car battery to guidance systems on cruise missiles. ... The company is among several teams hoping to someday win the Google Lunar X Prize competition, a $30-million race to the moon in which a privately-funded team must successfully place a robot on the moon's surface and have it explore at least 1/3 of a mile. It also must transmit high definition video and images back to Earth before 2016. ... should be ready to land on the lunar surface by 2013"
- ^ Powerset press release, 2007-03-17[dead link]
- ^ Powerset press release, 2006-11-02[dead link]
- ^ Powerset press release, November 2007[dead link]
- ^ PARC press release, 2007 Archived May 12, 2008 at the Wayback Machine[dead link]
[edit] External links
- Powerset main web site - redirects to Bing
[edit] See also
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$62.484 billion 
