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Google really rules my life.

I think I’ve made mention before just how much Google has changed my life. So many times during the day a quick command-K or ctrl-K gets me any of the data I’m looking for. It’s odd to see myself search Google versus other users, it seems as if my brain has learned which keywords work best for my query, without me needing to think.

Unfortunately, lots of the world isn’t like me. Most people don’t think in queries, and which words are most likely to be indexed. Enter, Powerset, a company that is working on developing a search engine targeted towards parsing the human language. While I can applaud them for trying, I have to admit I was skeptical if they can knock google down. It’s time to do a comparison.

Now before I show off some comparisons, I’d like to point out that to be fair, at the moment Powerset searches Wikipedia so we’ll be comparing it to Google’s site:domain.com feature.

To start with, we’re going to use one of the searches they recommend “Who is Jon Stewart”

The first thing we see is that Powerset is giving us data it has obtained from Freebase. Beyond that we see a list of results in Wikipedia that reference Jon.

So now, let’s do some comparison shopping… and here’s Google’s results

Based on our up front comparison, I’d say Powerset is holding up as a solid contender to Google. Most of our results all link to one of a few things, the Wikipedia entry for Jon Stewart, the Daily Show, the short lived Jon Stewart Show, and entries on Jon Stewart in other languages.

Of course, this was a recommended search, I’d expect to see results like this. Let’s go a but deeper now. At the moment, Serenity is playing on my tv, so it seems fitting. Let’s see what TV shows Joss Whedon has worked on. This time, we’ll use the string, “What TV shows has Joss Whedon worked on?”

I’m pretty pleased with the results found with this search. How will Google compare?

Obviously Firefly is the most successful show that Joss has worked on, but we notice the 3rd one down, Dollhouse. It’s Joss Whedon’s new series which I was actually unaware of. Funny thing, PowerSet missed this so we need to give the point to Google.

Lastly, let’s do one more test, this time, let’s find out who developed the Tesla Roadster. The Tesla Roadster is an electric sports car, developed by Larry Page and the Tesla foundation. Due to it’s electric engine, not only is it free of pollutants, it sports an impressive 4 second 0-60 time.

Good news, the Factz portion of Powerset noticed that Larry Page is an investor in Tesla Motors. The results below the Factz show Lotus’ work on the vehicle as well as well as more info on Larry Page.

We pretty much get the same info with Google, however we’re given a bit more info showing us Lotus played a much more important role than what PowerSet has led us to believe. All in all, we’re really not getting much benefit from PowerSet over Google. I like what PowerSet is trying to achieve, however I’m much more interested in seeing where other newcomers to the search engine world such as the human powered Mahalo. Granted, PowerSet is still in development so we’ll just have to watch and see what comes from the San Francisco firm.  For a bit more insight, I recommend checking out the Jason Calacanis’ blog post which led to me to my research.