Sunday, February 11, 2007

Internet Outsider: POWERSET

"Much hullaballoo today with the announcement that a search engine start-up has licensed some cool 'natural language search' technology from Xerox. The start-up, Powerset, hasn't actually deployed the technology yet, but it's apparently pretty cool, so now the story is that Google shareholders should start quaking in their boots.
Google shareholders should definitely quake--the stock's expensive enough that any hitch in the company's performance could knock off 30% off the price before breakfast--but this fear shouldn't be because of any search-engine start-up. A mistake that Google observers and industry participants repeatedly make is thinking that Google's dominance of the search business is a function of the quality of its search results. Build a better search engine, this wishful thinking goes, and you'll bring Google to its knees. Sorry, but you won't."

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