Ready, steady, go

Microsoft announced plans to acquire Powerset, a "natural search" firm that launched last year.

"Powerset will join our core Search Relevance team, remaining intact in San Francisco," wrote Satya Nadella on Microsoft's Live Search Blog. Nadella also said Powerset's natural language technology "nicely complements" existing language processing efforts at Microsoft.

Upon launch, Powerset was thought to be a viable "Google killer" because of its reported ability to gauge the meaning of content. (It is currently testing these capabilities on Wikipedia.) But the acquisition may also represent a legacy coup for Microsoft; some of Powerset's engineers came from PARC, formerly XEROX PARC, which created the first graphical user interface in the 1970s — a design Microsoft and Apple alternately take credit for.

"We're buying Powerset first and foremost because we're impressed with the people there," Nadella said. The company hopes to use Powerset's "shared vision" to improve search — and online advertising — with intent-based algorithms.

The cost of the acquisition was not disclosed. View a Powerset demo video.