The week begins and the hype machine starts rolling again. This story will be filed under, “rumor about a product that has the potential to be disruptive,” Without further ado I present you with Powerset. It’s a search engine, try to contain yourself while I elaborate.

The Results

What is important about the picture above is the way in which the search was structured. “Politicians who died in office” is certainly not, “politicians +died” or “politicians ‘who died’”. The query is structured as a normal human being would think to form their search. That is what Powerset hopes to offer, a natural language search alternative to Google.

Lets see how it stands up against our friends over at Mountain View in this simple test.

As much as it breaks my heart to say this, it appears that in this very simple test Google has been beaten. The Powerset results simply respond to the statement more accurately than Google’s results.

Web 2.0 Roundup

Lets face it, the search engine is currently in very private BETA and the only real interaction I have been able to get with it has been through the screen shots which the company has been kind enough to provide. It’s quite easy to hand over your best results and try to position yourself as a “Google killer”, it’s much harder to make yourself relevant over the huge landscape of natural language searches that are available. In short, I’m not quite sold yet.

Only time will tell whether Powerset is really the Web 3.0 alternative to Google, or just another bit of search vaporware with VC backing. Needless to say, I’m excited to find out.