Powerset Integration In Live Search

Sometimes, when a bigger company acquires a smaller one, it’s the end of innovation for the little guy as they slowly fade into non-existence. That was definitely NOT the case with the Microsoft Powerset acquistion. According to this post on the Powerset blog, the Live Search team and the Powerset crew are already integrating Powerset-powered search results into Live Search. There are three areas where results have have been enhanced so far: 1) queries where Live Search shows Answers now incorporate data from Freebase, 2) improved captions for Wikipedia articles, and 3) related searches which now display related articles in the sidebar. All three of these enhancements are being “flighted” on Live Search, which means they are only being shown to a small percentage of users. This is done for testing purposes before they roll out new features to everyone.