MSFT plans to use Powerset for more than just Web search

The Standard — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 23:22:58 -0400

All of the official statements that have come out on this have only indicated that Powerset's technology will be applied to Live Search, and we have confirmed this with a source close to the deal as well. --The Industry Standard

Well, the MSFT-Powerset near-acquisition rumors have the blogosphere aflutter this week, and since it's not confirmed you still have time to vote on this prediction as well.

Carla Thompson of Guidewire has an excellent writeup of the implications of the deal, which lays out an interesting possibility. Assuming that the deal goes through, integrating Powerset's technology into Live Search is a no-brainer. But integrating the company's semantic search capabilities into, for example, e-mail, is another proposition altogether. We have it from several sources that Microsoft continues to express a keen interest in all things semantic, and is showing early interest in more than just Powerset. Whether MSFT will make an additional semantic-related acquisition is grounds for another prediction altogether, but their well-established interest in the space does indeed suggest that they see the Semantic Web as something that has the power to revolutionize more than just search per se.

This is a prediction that MSFT and Powerset will announce that the deal has finally gone through. But that is not all -- in order to be judged favorably, an official Microsoft spokesperson must publicly confirm that the company has plans for Powerset's technology beyond just Live Search -- namely, that it has plans to incorporate at least aspects of Powerset's technology into EITHER Office, Outlook/Entourage, or Sharepoint.

To be clear, if a Microsoft spokesperson says nothing about Live Search but mentions Office as somewhere they see the Powerset technology potentially having an impact, this WILL be ground for favorably judgment. Again, the spokesperson needs to be official -- meaning that the proclamation can't just come in the form of a Tweet from an employee -- the idea here is that MSFT will put a stake in the ground -- no matter how subtle -- suggesting that the Semantic Web is a part of their strategy across more than just one product line.

The public confirmation may however come in the form of an answer to an interview question or in a similar forum -- it need not come in the form of a press release, for example. We understand that "public" is a hard word to throw around when talking about the Web these days, but for our purposes here this issue is moot -- we're going to assume that anything that an official spokesperson says is public information -- therefore in judging this prediction we will mostly looking to make sure that whomever is doing the talking is doing so on behalf of the company.