Semantics oriented search technology Powerset has launched its limited public testing application, the one that lends a new way to semantically navigate Wikipedia. It seems that their positioning themselves as an alternative to the technological norm, along with excellent public relations, has paid dividends. It seems that the talk of the Microsoft acquisition that started last week in blogs has turned out to be more than just rumours.

Microsoft’s Live Search Blog reads:

We are excited to announce that we have reached an agreement to acquire Powerset, a San Francisco-based search and natural language company. Powerset is to join our core Search Relevance team, remaining intact in San Francisco. Powerset brings with it natural language technology, which nicely complements other natural language processing technologies that we have in Microsoft Research.

More importantly, Powerset will bring to Live Search a set of talented engineers as well as computational linguists in downtown San Francisco. This will make a great team with a diverse range of experience and skills from other search engines and research organisations, such as PARC (formerly Xerox PARC).