OStatic

Last week, following a report in VentureBeat, we wrote about the rumor that Microsoft was set to acquire natural language search company Powerset for $100 million. Turns out the rumor was true, although the terms of the deal are not disclosed. Powerset gets its semantic search muscle from the open source, cluster-based technology Hadoop. As we've discussed before, Hadoop also powers much of Yahoo's search. It looks like Microsoft's LiveSearch is going to be embracing powerful open source clustered search. This could represent a new chapter in natural language search. Find more analysis on GigaOm.

While it's still only a rumor, VentureBeat is reporting that Microsoft has agreed to buy Silicon Valley semantic search engine Powerset for over $100 million--apparently to be announced next month. Powerset's search technology uses the open source cluster-based technology Hadoop, which provides fast answers to queries by using the resources of many computers. We wrote about both Hadoop and Powerset here, and got to hear from Powerset's Chad Walters. Based on what I saw Chad demonstrate, and Microsoft's need to catch up in search, I won't be surprised if this rumor is true.