

Powerset Launches.  Verdict: Meh. - jfarmer
http://20bits.com/2008/05/12/powerset-launches-verdict-meh/

======
abstractwater
These are the impressions I got after 40 minutes of tests:

\- The UI design is visually distracting, bulky, complicated. There's too much
going on at the top, 3 differently colored bars with the powerset logo, tab(s)
and huge search bar. The search bar is omnipresent, even in the individual
Wikipedia page you chose. Ironically, Google has a similar structure in its
result pages, but feels completely different because the background is all
white and less invasive.

\- The Factz are often distracting and presenting useless stuff. E.g.:
[http://www.powerset.com/explore/semhtml/Simple_DirectMedia_L...](http://www.powerset.com/explore/semhtml/Simple_DirectMedia_Layer)
presents around 25 factz. I counted 3 or 4 factz that are actually useful. The
meaning of the other factz in the context is either obscure ("parameters":
which ones?), deceiving or incomplete ("functionality", "ports", "operations",
etc), useless ("needs" (??), "SDL", "The Video"), or all of the above.

\- The way you actually use the Factz is terrible. First you clik on one fact,
then after being flashed with the fade-out bling on the right column you
actually have to move the mouse pointer all the way there, then the animation
scroll, then probably move the pointer to the left to click on something
actually useful or go back up to select another fact because the one you chose
was wrong anyway (why? see above). After 5 minutes of this I feel dizzy. Who
designed this stuff?

\- massive waste of screen real estate with large white space on the right
column, either entirely (results page) or partially (actual wikipedia result
page you selected).

I do think there are some cool things, but so far it seems hard to use IMO.

------
jfarmer
Summary: It's an expectations game and the combination of all the pre-launch
hype and the execution of this launch did them in. A classic case of over-
promising and under-delivering.

Try searching for "Who was the tenth President of the US?" on both Powerset
and Google to see the power of "natural language search" in action.

~~~
KirinDave
No one in a position of importance said this demo was a google killer. It's
not, it's basically a technology demo and hopefully a usable tool.

If you want a more fair comparison (you may not), site restrict your search to
wikipedia and then compare. Both powerset and google don't do well here, the
closest they get (and they both get nearly the same answer for the first few
hits) is a mention of the tenth _Vice_ President. I'll tell you why:

Tables. The data for this is in "List of Presidents of the United States" in a
purely tabular format. Tables suck for everyone right now! They're not really
NL, they're not keywordable, they're basically a nightmare because they
require a pretty surreal amount of context to grok.

This isn't really an excuse, I admit. Powerset is working on it, but we just
couldn't have it ready and still put out something when we wanted. At some
point you have to put out _something_ to show the world, and most powersetters
feel the current tool is interesting and helpful. It's not perfect, or even
necessarily complete, but I don't think anyone with an informed opinion
expected it to be a google killer.

But seriously, if you're going to do a comparison at least go apples-to-apples
and site-restrict to wikipedia. And yes, today at the lunch table the talk was
all about what new data sources to grow into next, and it's publicly available
information that we want to scale to the entire web.

Half the point of a pre-product like this (and lots of sites start out with
reduced-power versions of their final product, even Google) is to just get the
infrastructure made. Anyone who's got half a brain can tell you that getting
infrastructure to handle non-trivial search is a huge task. You have query
analysis, you have indexing, you have parallelized index servers, you have
failover, these days you have EC2, you have databases and backups and
monitoring and performance analysis and... arg. It's a lot of work.

And that's _done_ now. Powerset has a real infrastructure serving real queries
to real people off a real index which is updating in real time (as fast as we
can afford to do it right now). This isn't the end of Powerset's effort, it's
the beginning. I wish people would take it as such.

~~~
timr
Ya know...I feel for you, but right now you're a victim of your company's own
PR. If Powerset hadn't been blasted through everyone's media filter as a
Google-killer, I don't think anyone would care that your first product is tiny
and incomplete.

Expectations management is important. That said, if you guys have the
resources to persevere, this might not matter. Ask Microsoft about the
Zune....

~~~
KirinDave
Google "google-killer". Go ahead, I'll wait.

Powerset didn't apply this moniker. In fact, the PR has been trying to deflate
it. The media hungers for the fall of the Big Guy, and any story that can play
the angle of "The Next Big Thing" gets more hits than, "Check out this
interesting startup!"

Maybe we could have managed it better, maybe we couldn't have. My department
is engineering, so I don't know. But I'd like to pretend at least a few people
are interested in the more moderate but still fascinating reality. :)

~~~
jfarmer
The words "Google killer" might not have been uttered in public, but if you
read over old Powerset press releases it's clear that's the positioning.

The executives talk about "revolutionizing search" and "changing the way
people interact with information."

Gosh, that's just what Google did. :P

------
kyro
As of now, it looks like the only thing they're offering is a fresh new
redesign of Wikipedia, from a user's point of view. I'm sure there's a lot
going on in the background, but none of that technology really shines through,
especially after asking it several questions, to which the results were pretty
average.

Maybe the way I speak isn't natural enough.

~~~
jfarmer
Exactly. And I know from an engineer's perspective this is tough. The stuff
behind the scenes is really amazing, I'm sure, but the thing that truly
matters is the product.

This offering just doesn't stack up versus Google, even when you use both
solely to search Wikipedia.

My feeling isn't annoyance, but disappointment. Where's my revolutionary new
search engine?!?

~~~
jdroid
I get the impression their plan is so grandiose that it probably won't ever
reach a completed form... The context they've added to wikipedia is neat, but
what would they do to present a site I made a week ago? Are they adding this
extra context only to the popular sites? Framework based, perhaps?

I think I'd want context for all sites, or not at all. I prefer consistency
over occasional glitz.

~~~
jfarmer
It's not a problem to have a grandiose plan. You have to aim for the stars in
the startup game.

But you have to be extra-careful about publishing those aims two years before
a product launches. It will force you to deliver at 100%.

Risky risky.

~~~
jdroid
Hmm... point taken. Maybe this deserves an Ask YC, but what is the general
opinion of naming companies in an quasi-arrogant fasion. Powerset seems like a
cocky name compared to Google, which is even mispeled making me think they're
humble.

------
schtog
but searching wikipedia with the normal wikipedia search beats powerset...

i mean this is essentially air.

like norvig said "capital of france" is the important part, not "what is the
capital of france?".

oh well i wish them good luck and hope the succeed. competition is a good
thing.

------
byrneseyeview
[http://www.powerset.com/explore/pset?q=Why+did+powerset+fail...](http://www.powerset.com/explore/pset?q=Why+did+powerset+fail%3F&x=0&y=0)

------
hooande
I think the question for Powerset now is how quickly they can make their
technology apply to other websites. My guess it they choose wikipedia because
the html is fairly tame...it's much easier to semantically parse wikipedia
than it is the wild wild west that is html formatting on the web.

If this is the case, then they might be in trouble. They built up too much
hype to just be a search tool for wikipedia. If they can upgrade their
technology and search much more of the web then we'll have a better idea. For
right now? Meh.

~~~
jfarmer
The problem is, they've been indexing Wikipedia for a long time now -- at
least a year.

Is this the best they have to offer after all that time? I hope not.

~~~
okeumeni
Its funny when I think a site like about.com have as much if not more page
than wikipedia. What a financial blunder!

------
ola
What's with all the domains paraphrasing 37signals? Is there some chic trend
I'm not aware of?

~~~
jfarmer
Well, I'll tell you the story, but it's not that interesting.

I was talking with a friend about the name for a blog. My first conception was
a website where I posted lots of tiny bits of code, centered around Web 2.0.

So, lots of little bits of Web 2.0. Hmm, "bit," like bits and bytes. Then I
thought of Web 2.0 tropes and came up with 20bits since that was the trend
(37signals, 30boxes, 43things, etc.)

And now you know.

~~~
cousin_it
How about 2.0bits.com?

------
okeumeni
A search engine for Wikipedia?

I can’t believe people actually finance such projects.

~~~
metatronscube
Yeah, I mean this is what Im so surprised at. This kind of capital invested in
a university research environment would have produced so much more, and I
should know.

------
bluelu
I bet their factz are only based on simple keyword / keyword matching!

They are probably running out of money and need something to show off to get
more funding! :)

~~~
jfarmer
In their defense, they integrate Freebase, a hierarchical semantic database,
with Wikipedia.

Pretty cool, although it's the results that matter, not the technology.

------
johnrob
I searched for "President of France", and was not impressed. Ironically,
google got the answer right!

<http://www.powerset.com/explore/pset?q=president+of+france>

[http://www.google.com/search?&q=president+of+france](http://www.google.com/search?&q=president+of+france)

~~~
KirinDave
Feel free to try again, site restricting to wikipedia. ;)

~~~
boucher
Ok. The results are almost the same, except that Google's results have a much
better UI. While Sarkozy was fourth on Google, and third on Powerset, it was
both much higher on the Google page thanks to the ridiculously huge Powerset
"facz" box, and it was easy to scan because there wasn't so much visual
clutter vying for my attention (like yellow highlighting everywhere).

------
thomasswift
I think it is pretty cool, but the hype that surrounds powerset will lead to
many people think that it is nothing special.

~~~
jfarmer
Yeah, it can be deadly to generate too much hype before your product launches,
especially if it's going to take over a year and a half.

They've marketed themselves into a corner -- now it's Google-killer or bust.

------
mhidalgo
The reality is that the average person cares nothing for what happens behind
the scenes, they care about the results. If you are going to spend 15 million
dollars on a Wikipedia search tool and it doesn't offer any significantly
better search results than anyone else you wasted money, lots of it.

------
aswanson
Give them a break. They tried, and are still trying, to make search better.
Hell, they _launched_. That's more than most of us here have done.

~~~
okeumeni
With all that money my son would have done better!

~~~
aswanson
It's easy to pile on and mock people who attempt great things. In fact, that's
the usual response. So maybe they are on to something.

