Powerset is simply a bunch of hype and money thrown in the windows. You can build an engine much better overnight using the Yahoo answers and AnswerBag APIs.
Yes I too am skeptical. I work in the area of natural language interfaces and when I hear their claims I cringe.
My own feeling is that NLIs can be useful, but really only in closed domains. In fact my own efforts are toward NLIs to relational databases.
If I understand their approach, they are building semantic indicies over large sets of documents (e.g. wikipedia). Sure you can match the user's query using these indicies but the inference thereafter certainly must be very weak. Yes any functionality this gives could probably be achieved with simple IR based techniques.
Still I am curious about how this will all go down once they launch a public interface... Still, I will be pleased if they actually show something of value. Time will tell.
Agreed. Think about it. If they can answer any naturally posed question, are they not Turing test material? This rant,
which I linked to awhile ago in another post, sums up the situation: http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/061005-095006
Oh an another thing, I was very polite and considered when I requested to be a member of their power labs. And four weeks on now and no response. I consider that to be a bad sign.
How to build a natural language search engine. YahooAnswersAPI + AnswerBag API + index all FAQ webpages + index YELP and similar Q&A sites. That is it. Then when you get bought for that secret underlying technology send me a check. Matter fact don't. Send it to a educational charity in Africa or the 100 laptop project.
Edit: I know this because I got one of my co-workers to do it for me in the past using only the Yahooanswers api and believe it anyone who tried it loved it although it was more fun than helpful.
