Microsoft will purchase the search-engine startup from Powerset. The news comes several days after a rumor about the deal circulated on the Web.

The Powerset team will join Microsoft’s Search Relevance team.

Powerset is pioneering semantic search, technology that Nadella said is valuable to Microsoft’s direction for its search engine.

Semantic search attempts to extract meaning from search queries and Web pages rather than simply matching them up with relevant links based on keywords or previous or related searches. Search-engine leader Google still primarily uses keywords to deliver search results.

Powerset is currently testing a search engine that attempts to understand the meaning of Web pages, in part using technology licensed from Xerox’s PARC subsidiary. That technology creates a semantic representation of Web pages by parsing each sentence and extracting its meaning.

Microsoft plans to integrate Powerset’s technology with some of its own natural-language technology that has been in development in Microsoft Research, Nadella wrote.

Since search-based advertising is the largest slice in the online advertising pie, Microsoft must increase the profile of its Live Search engine in order to build this part of its business.

Live Search is seen as far inferior to Google’s search engine, and also ranks behind Yahoo in terms of how often it’s used.

微软收购Powerset

微软宣布已经收购自然语言搜索引擎Powerset，虽然价格暂未公开，但据较为可靠的传言，大致在一亿美元上下。微软此举显然意在与死敌Google在网络搜索的市场上再战一场。

微软负责搜索的团队声称Powerset的工程师是其最宝贵的财产，Powerset的团队将被维持，此外，微软还说Powerset在语义搜索方面有着最好的技术，能提供给使用者更相关，更清晰的搜索结果。因为现有的搜索技术是基于关键词的，而Powerset的自然语言搜索技术则是基于真实语义分析。

当然好东西都是有代价的，比起基于关键词的技术，真实语义分析需要多得多的计算资源，换句话说就是需要更多更强的服务器。Powerset的资金实力迫使其搜索范围仅限于Wikipedia。现在有微软的庞大资金作为后盾，Powerset也许能够实现其终极目标 — 索引整个因特网。

在Google基本垄断网络搜索的今天，我们享受其便利的同时，也会希望有挑战者站出来。因为无论如何，有选择总是好事情。语义搜索会不会在微软的推动下成为搜索技术2.0，我们拭目以待。

PS: 语义分析技术：能理解用户所搜索的关键词的含义以及多个关键词之间的关联，从而找出符合人类思维的真正的相关结果。