3 ms·
When we did user studies at Powerset, we did experiments where we put the Google name above search results from other engines and the Google was the strongest p
by KirinDave 10y ago
When we did user studies at Powerset, we did experiments where we put the Google name above search results from other engines and the Google was the strongest predictor.
One test actually used a randomized ranking function on wikipedia search (so the algorithm recalled as well as google, but randomly ranked the results without any thought to relevance) vs Google, and we labeled the random data as Google and the Google result as Yahoo!. Testing told us the garbage data with the G over it was better.
I dunno what you wanna do with that data. Maybe some soul searching? Funny story, though.
- frik 10y agoIs the Powerset technology still used somewhere for Bing? Bing used to be more intelligent right after the acquisition than today. Somehow it looks like they dropped the Powerset features after a few years. Also non EN-US Bing still looks and works like the old MSN search with a lot worse search results than Bing.com set to EN-US (Bing theme but old UX from MSN era and features frozen since MSN days).
- KirinDave 10y agoWithout disclosing things I shouldn't disclose (professionally if not legally), a lot of the acqusition was acquihire and then went on to cognitive services. A lot of what the powersetters did was bring their expertise in indexing in. The Powerset indexing requirements were fairly intense, so bing getting those was a big leg up over the previous (good, but somewhat less informed) work. A lot of the stuff we had at Powerset as custom services is now in Google and MS cognitive services. It's so cool to have access to those tools again. Luis.ai is really really fun to use lately.