Microsoft Powerset Adds Semantic Search To Wikipedia

Martin Brinkmann
Dec 2, 2009
Updated • May 23, 2018
Microsoft
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Wikipedia is a popular online encyclopedia that can be a good starting point for research on any subject you may be interested in.

What Wikipedia sorely needs is a better search engine though. Microsoft Powerset is a search engine technology that is powering Microsoft's own search engine Bing. The Powerset website however is currently being used to demonstrate the Powerset technology by providing a better Wikipedia search experience.

The most notable difference becomes apparent on the start page of Powerset. Here it is not only possible to enter specific keywords like Google Chrome or Microsoft, but also questions like "what did Benjamin Franklin invent" or phrases like "impressionist painters".

Wikipedia will return a list of possible results for those queries leaving the user with the task to look through them to find the article containing the right information.

The results pages that Powerset generates are also distinctively different from Wikipedia pages.Take Caffeine for an example. Wikipedia displays one extensive article about Caffeine that is divided into subsections.

Powerset on the other hand begins by displaying the most relevant information about Caffeine (and possible related meanings) at the top.

Even more interesting than that is the so called Factz section which are information compiled from various Wikipedia articles. Yes, that is factz, not facts.

These facts list the subject, a verb and an object and are listed in rows. For Caffeine its Caffeine (subject) Increases (verb) production effectiveness .. (object) in the first row and Caffeine Causes anxiety .. in the second with a total of 183 rows that can be displayed.

These sets can be selected for detailed information about the specific set by displaying relevant Wikipedia articles and information. Take a look at the demonstration video below for additional information:

Interested users can visit the Powerset website to test the services.

Powerset is no longer available as a standalone service. While Microsoft may have added some of the functionality to its Bing search engine, the actual interface that Powerset provided is no longer available.

Wikipedia has an article on the Powerset company before it was bought by Microsoft.

Summary
Microsoft Powerset Adds Semantic Search To Wikipedia
Article Name
Microsoft Powerset Adds Semantic Search To Wikipedia
Description
Powerset is a search engine technology that Microsoft acquired for its Bing search engine. A demo of the service was released recently.
Author
Publisher
Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. Some Dude said on March 19, 2023 at 11:42 am
    Reply

    Are these articles AI generated?

    Now the duplicates are more obvious.

    1. boris said on March 19, 2023 at 11:48 pm
      Reply

      This is below AI generated crap. It is copy of Microsoft Help website article without any relevant supporting text. Anyway you can find this information on many pages.

  2. Paul(us) said on March 20, 2023 at 1:32 am
    Reply

    Yes, but why post the exact same article under a different title twice on the same day (19 march 2023), by two different writers?
    1.) Excel Keyboard Shortcuts by Trevor Monteiro.
    2.) 70+ Excel Keyboard Shortcuts for Windows by Priyanka Monteiro

    Why oh why?

    1. Clairvaux said on September 6, 2023 at 11:30 am
      Reply

      Yeah. Tell me more about “Priyanka Monteiro”. I’m dying to know. Indian-Portuguese bot ?

  3. John G. said on August 18, 2023 at 4:36 pm
    Reply

    Probably they will announce that the taskbar will be placed at top, right or left, at your will.

    Special event by they is a special crap for us.

  4. yanta said on August 18, 2023 at 11:59 pm
    Reply

    If it’s Microsoft, don’t buy it.
    Better brands at better prices elsewhere.

  5. John G. said on August 20, 2023 at 4:22 am
    Reply

    All new articles have zero count comments. :S

  6. Anonymous said on September 5, 2023 at 7:48 am
    Reply

    WTF? So, If I add one photo to 5 albums, will it count 5x on my storage?
    It does not make any sense… on google photos, we can add photo to multiple albums, and it does not generate any additional space usage

    I have O365 until end of this year, mostly for onedrive and probably will jump into google one

  7. St Albans Digital Printing Inc said on September 5, 2023 at 11:53 am
    Reply

    Photo storage must be kept free because customers chose gadgets just for photos and photos only.

  8. Anonymous said on September 5, 2023 at 12:47 pm
    Reply

    What a nonsense. Does it mean that albums are de facto folders with copies of our pictures?

    1. GG said on September 6, 2023 at 8:24 am
      Reply

      Sounds exactly like the poor coding Microsoft is known for in non-critical areas i.e. non Windows Core/Office Core.

      I imagine a manager gave an employee the task to create the album feature with hardly any time so they just copied the folder feature with some cosmetic changes.

      And now that they discovered what poor management results in do they go back and do the album feature properly?

      Nope, just charge the customer twice.

      Sounds like a go-getter that needs to be promoted for increasing sales and managing underlings “efficiently”, said the next layer of middle management.

  9. d3x said on September 5, 2023 at 7:33 pm
    Reply

    When will those comments get fixed? Was every editor here replaced by AI and no one even works on this site?

  10. Scroogled said on September 5, 2023 at 10:47 pm
    Reply

    Instead of a software company, Microsoft is now a fraud company.

  11. ard said on September 7, 2023 at 4:59 pm
    Reply

    For me this is proof that Microsoft has a back-door option into all accounts in their cloud.
    quote “…… as the MSA key allowed the hacker group access to virtually any cloud account at Microsoft…..”
    unquote

    so this MSA key which is available to MS officers can give access to all accounts in MS cloud.This is the backdoor that MS has into the cloud accounts. Lucky I never got any relevant files of mine in their (MS) cloud.

  12. Andy Prough said on September 7, 2023 at 6:52 pm
    Reply

    >”Now You: what is your theory?”

    That someone handed an employee a briefcase full of cash and the employee allowed them access to all their accounts and systems.

    Anything that requires 5-10 different coincidences to happen is highly unlikely. Occam’s razor.

  13. TelV said on September 8, 2023 at 12:04 pm
    Reply

    Good reason to never login to your precious machine with a Microsoft a/c a.k.a. as the cloud.

  14. Anonymous said on September 18, 2023 at 1:23 pm
    Reply

    The GAFAM are always very careless about our software automatically sending to them telemetry and crash dumps in our backs. It’s a reminder not to send them anything when it’s possible to opt out, and not to opt in, considering what they may contain. And there is irony in this carelessness biting them back, even if in that case they show that they are much more cautious when it’s their own data that is at stake.

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