New search engine technology - a threat to google?

[motivez]

Anyone aware of Powerset will know that they have been busy blowing their air all over the place regarding their “coming soon” technology that is set to give the smack down to Google. As yet, only a select few know much about them and have had a chance to see their tech.

As of today a new company has opened it’s doors well ahead of Powerset. This new company is called True Knowledge and is seriously impressive. They are based in the UK, have some large funding and some seriously impressive technology.

They say, “A radical new approach to search engine technology has been developed by True Knowledge Ltd that has the potential to change the way factual information is made accessible via the Internet. It neatly side steps the problem of getting computers to read, by structuring facts in a way that machines and humans can easily understand.”

Rather than trying to explain all the new tech to you, please enjoy this feature presentation in video form that will tell you exactly how it works and why it looks so impressive.

Impressed? Want to put it through your own testing? Good news as they are currently looking for beta testers. Simply head over to [true knowledge]™ - home and sign up to have a joy ride on their search engine today.

YouTube Video

I thought this was really amazing when I saw it, google is great and we all use it (does anyone use another search engine as their primary one?) .. but it is lacking in certain areas, and this project seems to fill the gap.

I really like the idea of being able to enter results to help make the results better, almost like a combination of wikipedia and search engine technology (more than artificial intelligence), and I especially like the flexible API that's coming along with it.. who knows what amazing applications will be created as a result of this.

I don't think this is really a threat to google though, they can either come up with their own version of this or simply buy out the project if they want to.

[Simius]

That is cool. Depending on how well it works for obscure facts, I could really use something like that.

[Dumpy Dooby]

I just sent in a request for a beta account. I'm a walking encyclopedia of useless trivial information. I'll definitely be able to put this thing to the test.

[Dylith]

Looks like a great idea. I just sent in a request for a beta account.

[AVengeance]

just FYI... I use ASK.COM most of the time, not Google. I still can't figure out why Google became a verb. It's not really that good.

[motivez]

Because google wasn't cluttered with all the shit that excite, yahoo, etc.. had at the time. It had the box, the buttons, and then your results..

I don't use anything except for google to search, I don't really see a compelling reason to either.. I haven't tried ASK in years, what's so great about it?

Last I heard, they manually edit their index.. I don't know that their results would be any more or less relevant than google's.. I trust the google algorithm to rank pages appropriately.

[JaJae]

I've tried ask every now and then. Haven't used it recently. The results have been subpar for me. I usually do better at Google/Yahoo. And having Google as the defualt search engine of Firefox/Opera I see no reason to type in a search page to make search.

I assume there is the feature to add Ask as well, but I just simply don't care enough. Askjeeves was unimpressive. Ask has always trailed in revelent content for me. Opera even has a "Google News" search built in. I'm a Googler, unless Google fails me then I resort to other engines. Google rarely fails me and if it does, the other engines surely don't help.

[Dumpy Dooby]

API just got released today.

The Official True Knowledge Blog



I think I'm going to contact them directly and see if I can get in the private beta.