New natural language search engine Powerset, still in pre-launch stealth mode, has had a ridiculous amount of press this year. And while some have said there is too much hype around this company (even me), you have to give them some credit. They are certainly open with their plans, and willing to experiment with new ideas.
An example: they announced Powerlabs, a sandbox for users to suggest and give feedback on future Powerset features. People who sign up for Powerlabs are also promised early news, at least an hour before it is posted on the Powerset blog.
Another example: In May Powerset COO Steve Newcomb talked about how the company was predicting future growth, and posted data on their model on the company blog. When readers bravely requested that Powerset release the model itself, Newcomb complied, saying it would be made available this summer. In a post on his personal blog he said the reason for sharing the models was to show that the company intends to be open and give users unfettered access to information:
As I mentioned before, opening up our modeling techniques is part of a larger goal to begin the process of changing our image of a secretive stealth startup to a completely open company that gives you unfettered access to our product(s), the ability to help us design them and to provide insight into the way we think inside of Powerset.
Today, Powerset published the first in a series of models, with a Flash interface. Company-specific baseline assumptions have been removed or altered, but most of the industry assumptions remain intact.
Neal Mueller (Powerset Product Manager) walked me through the models and how they work. This first set helps a company that intends to index the web whether it is better to purchase, lease or create virtual servers on Amazon EC2. Assumptions about the size and refresh frequency of the index can be changed. Since the model is forward looking, it also makes assumptions about future server power and cost reductions from Moore’s Law.
All of the assumptions can be altered in the Flash interface, and the models can be embedded into other websites (although I could not get it to properly embed here).
Mueller says that at least two more dashboard models are coming – one for unique user forecasting and another one that they are not yet disclosing. The company is asking for feedback on the models, and will clearly take it seriously. Newcomb’s personal email is listed on the front page and he requests that feedback come directly to him.
methinks this company is going to ditch search entirely and become a planning-a-company forecasting type service.
but i base this on absolutely nothing.
It’s sad… I don’t even think I would know how to use a natural language search engine.
sounds more like power hype. Having been through the dot.coms since 95 I am seeing the same amount of hypes before the bubble.
Good. I like bubbles. They can be lucrative if you jump out before they pop
The bigger the “hype” prior to launch, the harder you fall, unless you are Steve Jobs, the real one that is.
Their success is partly due to them keeping us involved.
As per Mike, “They are certainly open with their plans, and willing to experiment with new ideas.” This sound to me like another company that started virtually unknown and is today a powerhouse. Google has thrived on experimenting and entertaining new an even wired ideas. If PowerSet keeps that up,then they might become very successful.
beingparents – what “success” is that? throwing us over the ass end of the hype curve before even launching a product?
they pushed out the hype so early that their product must inevitably emerge in the disappointment phase
Can’t really comprehend the graph which explains the time taken to index the web. Why is it that the slope changes so much as the number of document increases. For e.g. in the graph shown the slope for the first 3 billion documents is very different from the following billions.
Mike,
Crunchbase links are really Pain In the ***!
I like it more before , when i click and open the target site directly.
Honestly , i – and i think many others – don’t care much about the company founders , funds , users rates , etc.
Faisal;
I seriously hope you’re joking. If you’re not, then you’re like the guy that repeatedly hits himself with a hammer, bitching that it hurts. If something is that painful, then don’t do it.
Last I checked, most people had control over their own mouse and what it clicks on
Hey gotta give then credit for keeping their VC’s happy for a quick flip because they have a greater chance of suckering some acquiring company who likes kool aid they’re serving up like mad !
I have to agree with the other commentors. “Powerhype” should be the name of this company. It’s also amusing to see them putting out all these models, etc as if that proves anything. Many failed companies had models that never materialized. Let’s see a live demo please.
Robert.
I am daily Techcrunch reader for years , and when i see new story about startup , i click on the link to go to the site and view it.
Now i have to click on the link , visit its Crunchbase page , and click again to visit the site , which is unnecessarily in my opinion.
You might consider me lazy man
, maybe .. but i don’t see any value for me by visiting its info page in Cruchbase , and i am sue I’m not going to click on the Ads on that page 
Ah yes, I see what you’re saying… I assumed that the logo linked directly to the service, while the text link in the blog post linked to the Crunchbase. In all actuality, I think linking the logo to the service is a better way to go…
Actually , both the text link and the logo are linking now to the Crunchbase page.
I give these guys little chance of success. Why? Quite simply because they’ve yet to launch a product. Don’t forget that they *internally* have many working protoypes that help them test speed and relevancy. Why not expose them if things look so rosey? Why not? Because my guess is that things are going well for them, and, as such, they need to buy time with these ridiculous side projects. It reminds me of a failed .com from three years ago named Dipsie. Anyone remember those clowns?
I hate to say it but PowerSet is the real “ClownCo”.
Back to the subject.
I think this is another hype just like Riya buzz if you guy’s remember it.
pathetic, they should spend there effort/$ on launching a great product, and not on flash interfaces.
Sheesh, just put your frickn spreadsheet out there
Does any1 know who their PR agency is
will love to use it for our launch
For those of you who’re asking to see more than just PR from Powerset, they in fact had a limited demo a couple weeks ago. I got videos of it on my blog post Powerset demo.
I am surprised to see a company put these types of projections into Flash and post them online for the world to see. Not because it is super secret, but because it seems like a waste of time. As a product manager I would think that this is a bit gimmicky and prone to offer little in return for the effort.
Anyone want to help them out with their models? Not everyone raise your hand at once. Bueller?
Hey guys, this is Mark Johnson, the product manager for Powerlabs. Just to respond to a few of the comments above. . . this wasn’t a waste of time or distraction for us: we had to make the models anyway and putting it in Flash was pretty easy, since we used Xcelsius. Neal is our intern for the summer and it was a good exercise for him. In terms of product, I encourage you to check out the videos that Chuck posted. Also, we’ll be releasing Powerlabs next month, where you’ll be able to play with a number of Powerset product demos. The wait is almost over!
So, in the meantime, why not actually play with our model and see whatchya think? =)
Mark,
You seem well intentioned but the truth is that your search engine still hasn’t launched. Most of us believe that you will sink or swim based purely on how good your relevancy is, along with how fast your query response times are. Everything else is superfluous. You need to launch a quality index with good relevancy. That’s all that matters now.
Stone
Counting to a billion starts with 1. Powerset should remember that. Their models are a joke!
I don’t get — “Hype thing”. I’m very confused with Google’s TOS.
Does Google allow million dollar powerset to use Google search result rather than licensing or use custom search?
Too compete Google or Not compete Google. You shouldn’t use Google search results if you were competing Google company. I think you should compete Yahoo or Hakia instead of Google.
I’m confuse with powerset hype. You guys let me down…. I’ve been avid, fan, and stalking powerset for weeks. Now, you let me down .
@valleyblogmagazine – You need a lot of processing power initially to feed the index to capture a minimum document set. You’ll notice from the graphs that effectively what is being done is to accelerate an organic index rate so that they can launch, say, in 3 months as opposed to 9. This organic index rate would be split between refreshes and new docs moving forward.
This is why the use of virtual servers are a good idea initially, because unlike a lease which will commit you to ongoing monthly recurring payments, you can excellerate your expenditure initially but then ramp down your cost structure going forward.
So, part of the calculations in your cost modeling is to work out where your breakeven point is. Also, the timing of the launch should be such that when you move out of the virtual server phase that you are able to make your purchase at an optimal speed vs cost point (typically just prior to a new model launch).
I saw the demo. I think Google might sue Powerset for violating TOS.
They have start over, over, and over again. No press told us that Powerset plans to use Google custom search. Instead. They would use PHP to strip the site from Google’s page. I think it’s against TOS or google’s policy to transmit content in their site.
With million dollar. I think Powerset should buy google licenses.
I think Google guys would get piss off if Powerset use Google content off the site without using Google Javascript custom search.
My task today was to help my team figure out how whether we should use EC2 or not. I can’t use the dashboard as it is, but I can definitely leverage the ideas. Not sure why Powerset shared them, perhaps for the marketing or as a side project, but it helped me. So thanks guys.
As for the other comments, shame on you.
Wow — this can be used for most SEOs and SEMs for data mining purposes. The coolest part of this data mining situation is that one can forecast what will happen and how the search topography will change in the future. Imagine what this will be like for forecasting and imagine how loved these types of tools will be.
Are there other tools to do trending and forecasting or does my Trending article (http://wiki.ima...?title=Trending) say it all?
The last link was mean to be Trending. I hope that works.
@28 I don’t work Google company. I spend hours program Google widget stuff. Shame on you for not reading Google TOS clearly.
9.2 Unless you have agreed otherwise in writing with Google, nothing in the Terms gives you a right to use any of Google’s trade names, trade marks, service marks, logos, domain names, and other distinctive brand features.
Please let us know if you brought Google Licenses — Print Newspaper or Blogs. Stop lying about hype thing. Stop wasting our time reading charts.
Now, Xerox Licenses don’t work with Google Licenses. They are like oxymoron company. You have make search engine that flies like kitty hawk! That’s hype.
I saw the demo. It’s not really hype. You killed the hype. I start believeing powerset hype. But you killed the hype. Go back reinvented hype!