The rumors accumulating over the previous couple of months had been true: Microsoft has bought natural-language search vendor Powerset for an undisclosed quantity.Microsoft announced the offer on July 1. Microsoft is organizing to make use of Powerset;s men and women and technologies to “take Search to the next level by adding understanding of the Internet and meaning behind the words in searches and webpages,
Office 2010 Standard,” according to a post on the Live Search blog.Even more from that posting by Satya Nadella,
Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus, Senior Vice President of Lookup,
Windows 7 Pro Product Key, Portal and Advertising:“Powerset will join our core Lookup Relevance team,
Windows 7 64 Bit, remaining intact in San Francisco. Powerset brings with it natural language technologies that nicely complements other normal language processing technologies we have in Microsoft Research.”Some have taken to referring to Microsoft;s purchase of Powerset as a piece of Microsoft;s “Plan B” following the breakdown in acquisition talks between Microsoft and Yahoo.(I noticed Richard Sprague,
Windows 7 sale, Senior Director of Marketing in the Microsoft Research Incubation team, hint via a blog post last week that his team had had some interesting interactions with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates just before Gates retired. Given Sprague;s areas of focus, perhaps he was referring to Powerset.)What do you think: Is the Powerset acquisition a good first move for Microsoft after the dissolution of the Yahoo offer?