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This comparison is unfair to Powerset and to Google. Powerset is a very new company that is trying to solve a subset of search and with a different focus. Google has been in the search space for last 10 years, relentlessly innovating, has a lions share in the search space and the focus is to solve the search for all the use cases rather than the “Semantic Web”.

In spite of this, since Powerset is in the search space (It is good and bad for Powerset. Good becasuse Google has made search a very lucrative market and bad because it will be compared to the likes of Google), it will be compared with Google for sure. So what the heck, I also tried few queries

Query: When did India win the world cup?

Google: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=When+did+India+win+the+world+cup%3F&btnG=Search

Powerset: http://www.powerset.com/explore/pset?q=When+did+India+win+the+world+cup%3F&submit.x=0&submit.y=0

Winner: Google (Much better results and more information)

Query: When did Mahatma Gandhi die?

Google: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=When+did+Mahatma+Gandhi+die&btnG=Search

Powerset: http://www.powerset.com/explore/pset?q=When+did+Mahatma+Gandhi+die&x=47&y=11

Winner: Google (Powerset yielded zero results. Google gives the precise answer)

I am sure I can find hundreads of queries that work better in Powerset. Moreover, I should probably restrict the search of Google to wikipedia Since Powerset only searches on wikipedia and freebase. But that is besides the point. Powerset is trying to solve a different problem for different use cases and it has a very long way to go to get there. For me, I am not sure if I will use Powerset. When I am searching, I do not have “?” all the time. Sometimes I am in the “discovery” mode and sometimes in the “exploration” mode. And both times, I can pretty much frame my query and have Google answer it for me. What I might find useful is if I have the power of Google and some features of clusty that can tag the search results of my query.

Query: When did mahatma gandhi die

Clusty: http://clusty.com/search?input-form=clusty-simple&v%3Asources=webplus&query=When+did+mahatma+gandhi+die

Clusty creates these clusters of the search results on the left that can help you navigate through your search results. Of course, Google strives to give you the answer at the very top, Clusty can be useful if you are in the exploration mode! I quite like it.

Anyway, there are lots of blogs written about powerset and Google and I found some to have done a good job :

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/powerset_vs_google.php

http://www.appscout.com/2008/05/powerset_vs_google_semantic_se_1.php

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2304247,00.asp

This entry was posted Monday, May 12th, 2008 at 8:42 pm and is filed under Search, Google, Entrepreneurship. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.