hype watch
Bambi Franciso reportulates that Amazon's Jeff Bezos is
considering a personal investment in much-hyped natural-language search engine Powerset. It's been widely reported that Powerset planned to use Amazon computing resources, but this would be an unusual vote of confidence from Bezos. Unless he really is just looking for a
new toy.
hype watch
Watch the above video if you must — D7TV's Sarah Meyers hits this past weekend's party for "natural language" search engine
Powerset. Best quotes:
Girl 1: (gestures grandly) Powerset is going to transform the search industry. (uncertain pause) I was told to say this.
Meyers: They were telling me that the Internet is going to be like a person.
Girl 1: YES!!!
Meyers: But you know? I don't really believe that Powerset's going to be a like a person. (turns to other girl) Do you think it's going to be like a person?
Girl 2: (befuddled) No ... (more strongly) NO!
Actually, no, wait —
here's the best quote, from comments at Techcrunch:
I am a VC who has invested $100,000 in PowerSet and am desperately worried.
Maybe Powerset will be like a person who drinks a little too much sometimes.
hype watch
The Palo Alto Research Center today
announces the licensing of its "natural language' search tech to
Powerset, a startup search engine that will attempt to "out-Google Google," in the words of
angel investor and
board member Peter Thiel. Lots of Valley traction around this one, as even Thiel pal
Sean Parker put down his beverage long enough to throw in. So what's the big deal?
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