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The author needs to get a grip, a lot of technology bootstraps on top wikipedia with a capacity to scale from there. Powerset unveiled their natural language se
by spidaman 16y ago
The author needs to get a grip, a lot of technology bootstraps on top wikipedia with a capacity to scale from there. Powerset unveiled their natural language search on the wikipedia corpus and were acquired by Microsoft for $100M a few months later. I'm sure MS wasn't just acquiring an index of wikipedia.
- MichaelGG 16y agoSo, what's Qwiki's technology that's so powerful here then? I think the sentiment is that their technology isn't anything special, and they don't have any other particularly distinguishing feature, so why such investment? With Powerset, the value was supposed to be in the technology, even if the demo was on Wikipedia. With other companies, say, Twitter, the power is in the size of their network and potential for something, even if the technology isn't groundbreaking.
- spidaman 16y agoSure, just don't judge a book by it's... I don't know what, if any, magic Qwiki has cooking but I think the OP is excessively harsh. My point was that a lot of startups have needed a big round to go to the next level from a limited proof of concept where there's nothing special on their public facing service. So what? Hopefully the vision and potential is evident under the hood and that's what the investment was predicated on.
- danieldk 16y agoPowerSet had many key NLP people and a LFG grammar/parser. Can you elaborate what QWiki has to offer, except a nicer user interface for Wikipedia?