This image was lost some time after publication.

The Palo Alto Research Center today announces the licensing of its "natural language' search tech to Powerset, a startup search engine that will attempt to "out-Google Google," in the words of angel investor and board member Peter Thiel. Lots of Valley traction around this one, as even Thiel pal Sean Parker put down his beverage long enough to throw in. So what's the big deal?
Some are mighty impressed with the search-fruits of natural language, but its principal selling point is a little counter-intuitive. Users who don't know how to use power search methods in Google or elsewhere are just as unlikely to realize they can ask Powerset (or any other search engine) a grammatically correct question. They're also going to always enter the simplest terms to start with anyway, since it's much easier to just enter "cow porn" into the search field rather than "where can i find me some good porn about cows." (Let's see some natural-language porn search results, please.) Power users will like the better results rendered by natural language, but they'll also be very quick to ferret out the problems and logic gaps in the system.

All of which is kind of beside the point. It's naive to think that Google won't build a ground-up natural language system if and when Powerset becomes any kind of threat, and unless the amazing PARC search tech is so brilliant that it knocks everyone's socks off, the differences between the two systems will be academic, consumer-wise. The only way to "out-Google Google" at this point is to rack up a few billion dollars and purchase it. Smart money says that if Powerset is any kind of success, it will be Google buying out Powerset.

By the way: big Powerset party this weekend! You're going, right? Right?