14 DAY TRIAL // The first signs of the natural language evolution of Microsoft's Live Search are live. Having swallowed Powerset as of August 1, 2008, Microsoft moved forward with the integration of the natural language search company and its resources into Live Search. On September 17, the first three integration projects were made available to end users. As a direct consequence of shared technologies between Live Search and Powerset, Live Search can offer users Freebase Answers, enhanced Wikipedia results complete with more comprehensive captions, and a range of new related searches associated with the Factz engine.
“These projects were meant to be achievable in 30 days and act as a first collaboration between the Live Search and Powerset teams. We have plans for deeper integration in the future, but these projects gave us an opportunity to get to know our colleagues up in Redmond and drive greater understanding of our respective technologies. All of these projects are currently being 'flighted' on Live Search, which means that they are being shown only to a small percentage of users (if you get one, consider yourself lucky!). Once we’ve gotten data back from the tests, we’ll plan next steps and decide what features will eventually roll into the product,” explained Powerset's Mark Johnson.
With the inclusion of the new natural-language processing technology into Live Search, Microsoft is benefiting from tools designed to drill the intent and meaning of the users' queries. Dr. Scott Prevost, General Manager, Powerset, and Dr. Hugh Williams, Primary Development Manager, Live Search, revealed that the first project was focused on improving the reach of Live Search Answers. In this regard, Freebase Answers has expanded some categories with the inclusion of a topic summary with links.
“Our second project was to use Powerset's semantic technology to generate improved captions for Wikipedia articles. Because Wikipedia articles show up in a large percentage of Live Search queries, it's important that the captions are top notch,” Prevost and Williams stated. “For our third project, we used Powerset's Factz extraction to generate a list of related searches for a set of queries.”