Powerset’s search technology scoop, may scare Google
Powerset, a San Francisco search engine company, will announce Friday it has won exclusive rights to significant search engine technology it says may help propel it past Google.
Matt Marshall, Venture Beat, February 8, 2007
From the article:
The technology, developed at Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in Silicon Valley, seeks to understand the meanings between words, akin to the way humans understand language — and is thus called “natural language.” It has been thirty years in the works.
....Powerset’s initial talks with PARC last year were enough to convince two well-known Silicon Valley venture capital firms Foundation Capital and the Founders Fund to invest in Powerset at a very high price. The firms and other individuals invested $12.5 million, and own less than a third of the company in return.
The venture capitalists made the investment based on an assumption that Powerset would complete the licensing deal. Negotiations on the deal, just completed, were so secretive that Powerset’s executives hid a Xerox PARC scientist, Ron Kaplan, in a back room when VentureBeat stopped by for an interview last year. Kaplan, who has led the “natural language” group for several years, joined Powerset as chief technology officer in July. This is a coup for Powerset, because Kaplan did not respond to some early probes from Google. In an interview, Kaplan said he didn’t believe Google took natural language seriously enough. “Deep analysis is not what they’re doing. Their orientation is toward shallow relevance, and they do it well.” Powerset, however, “is much deeper, much more exciting. It really is the whole kit and caboodle.” While natural language has been a vexing problem for decades, Kaplan said he believes it is ready for prime-time...
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