Microsoft takes over search specialist Powerset

Following its recent failed attempt at a Yahoo! takeover, Microsoft continues shopping. Microsoft manager Satya Nadella announced that the software giant has carried out successful negotiations to purchase the start-up company Powerset. Details of the acquisition were not announced. As soon as the first rumours about the deal became known over the weekend, news service VentureBeat put the purchase price at $100 million; other sources name a figure of $10 million.

The semantic search engine, which started in May is one of a number of small companies that are working on making net search engines smarter, so that they will deliver better quality hits. This may be done, for example, by search queries taking context into account. The company, founded in 2005, developed a search technology for the Wikipedia online encyclopaedia that, among other things, was able to answer simple questions.

Read more: heise.de