
Media Darling Powerset vs. Non-Media Darling Hakia - prakash
http://whydoeseverythingsuck.com/2008/05/media-darling-powerset-vs-non-media.html
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okeumeni
Well I think it’s really hard to compare a search engine to another base on
what happened behind the curtain. Search engine technology is a really complex
matter. Any speculation done from the surface is probably a guessing game.

I will agree though that Hakia seems to be much closer to what they promise to
deliver that Powerset. Hakia may have a bit of semantic flavor but remain
overall a poor search engine. I always wonder what Powerset is doing with all
the money they have raised. I would felt terribly disappointed if I have given
them my money. Building a search engine for Wikipedia (not even a good one)
with all that money is a little short.

I will take the opportunity here to express my reserve on semantic search. If
semantic search is define as a search engines that answer questions, here are
two reasons why I think it is not a very promising way for search:

1.It is hard for people in general to type an entire question, users are
generally lazy and anything that makes them think is not potentially good.
2.The language factor. Though the web is mostly written in English it will be
a challenge for these companies to implement a semantic search in every
language. From English to French there’s a whole new world.

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alex_c
I've never really paid attention to this field, but I just tried the sample
queries from <http://20bits.com/2008/05/12/powerset-launches-verdict-meh/> in
Hakia. As far as I can tell, Hakia only answers the last question correctly
without having to dig through the results.

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hank777
with all due respect this is just not true. I just did the first few tests and
it seemed to nail all of them in the first answer or two in the list.

~~~
alex_c
To clarify, I didn't mean to say that the results returned by hakia don't
contain the correct answer. For powerset/google the answer to many of the
questions seemed to be right in the title or description of the results,
without having to click on the answers, and that wasn't the case for hakia.

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cousin_it
I love how the first result for "2 + 2" on Hakia says that 2 + 2 = 5.
<http://www.hakia.com/search.aspx?q=2+%2B+2>

Seriously, Hakia seems useful (if slow), and Powerset seems useless. It'll be
a shame if marketing wins this game.

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xirium
Don't be quick to dismiss Powerset's indexing speed. It is relatively easy to
improve the efficiency of a known algorithm. Likewise, it is easier to develop
an algorithm if efficiency constraints are defered.

It is relatively easy to improve efficiency within one module by 10% and
occasionally by a factor of four or more. If the average system performance
improves by 10% with each change then a team could eventually improve
efficiency by a factor of 2^10.

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apu
Uh, maybe I'm missing something, but how exactly do you go from 10% increases
and end up with a 1000-fold efficiency increase?

Unless you're saying they can make 75 such changes, each giving a 10%
increase...

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xirium
Yes, many small changes. Furthermore, this is a pessimistic case. If your
average improvemented was 12% then you'd require significantly less
improvements.

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DaniFong
Hakia seems quite excellent, actually. I suspect the defaults are better than
google -- words are much more 'closely bound'. When I ask a question, I seem
to get back results in the form of an answer.

But we can't figure out just how useful the tech Powerset is, because it
indexes so little of the web. Were I looking for an answer on wikipedia, I'd
have probably looked there anyway.

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mlinsey
If we subject Hakia to the same (very limited) tests that the other article
about PowerSet was using, Hakia often performs even worse.

For example, here's Hakia's results for "Who is the President of France?":

[http://www.hakia.com/search.aspx?q=who+is+the+president+of+f...](http://www.hakia.com/search.aspx?q=who+is+the+president+of+france%3F)

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comatose_kid
When I can get an answer (bonus if it is correct) to queries like 'How many
times has John McCain appeared on the Daily Show?', I'll be impressed.

One weak area in Google's armor is taking time into account, eg: 'How many
times did John McCain appear on the Daily Show in 2006?'

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hank777
Indeed even the best search engines are only going to be able to answer that
question if it is stated somewhere. Hakia can do that. However no search
engine is going to be able to figure out the answer by, for example adding up
all the times he appeared in a given year. So if someone wrote somewhere "john
mcain was a guest on the daily show seven times in 2008" hakia should be able
to give you an answer.

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xirium
There's a bigger problem there. For the current year, the quantity could
change. Old, incorrect values would outweigh new, correct values. So, you
still wouldn't get the right answer.

"Who, what, when and how do" queries can be answered with current AI
techniques but "how many" queries are much harder.

