Valleywag
Whither Powerset, the once-hot search engine backed by a heavenly set of angel investors, including Facebook board member Peter Thiel? Little has been heard from the startup since COO Steve Newcomb left amid rumors of a C-suite love triangle. Cofounder Barney Pell — another leg in the whispered-about tryst — is so checked out that he's wasting time coding Facebook applications. The company has been searching, so far fruitlessly, for a CEO. Now comes word that Yahoo may be interested in buying the startup.
It's not clear how interested Yahoo really is. And it's unlikely Powerset will command a high price, if it sells. The company's core technology, XLE, is licensed from Xerox PARC, and for the rest, it mostly uses open source. But for Yahoo, whose in-house efforts to improve its search haven't made a difference in the marketplace, Powerset may hold enough interesting technology to be worth a look. Or perhaps Yahoo, bleeding engineers, is eager to hire en masse through an acquisition. Alas for Powerset's employees: They'd just be trading a small soap opera for a larger one.
Comments
Last time I saw Barney, he was sporting a quite spiffy black Powerset shirt, so... he's trying to get the name out there, and they still have enough money for free shirts, so bottom feeders look elsewhere.
I've been saying for months that PowerSet will be added to the deadpool within 12 months irrespective of personnel changes. The concept doesn't work well enough to be a company.
jeeze, I read the linked post to Pell's blog and the guy he did the coding with is a former Powerset engineer who started a company that specializes in facebook apps.
Not a very good endorsement for powerset, if you ask me.
2 scenarios: either this engineer bought all the facebook app hype(he's a typical business retarded savant) or even viewing facebook apps more realistically, he thought it would be better than powerset. Let's hope it's the former.
Never heard of 'em.
Hey I'm working on a new Facebook ap. When you install it it automatically sends me a dollar from your credit card (you know the one they asked you to enter when you signed up, "for convenience").
I think it's going to be VERY convenient for me. I hope you will all try it.
Details to follow.
PowerSet? More like VaporSet.
What a waste of energy and money.... they're doing everything wrong!
PS: Weren't they suppose to launch on TC40? Hehe... they lied to them too.
i think barney pell is a pretty cool guy. he made facebook apps and doesnt afraid of anything.
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