Bing Gains Improved Natural Language Search

Zach Minors reports that Bing is now able to interpret chatty (natrual language) queries . If a user asks who was the first president of the United States, an image of George Washington and a brief biography appears.

-DD

 

Start

Start, which has been on the Web since 1999, is perhaps the oldest web-based natural language search engine. As with Ask.com, users can post natural language queries and generally get information that is on-topic. Start was developed at MIT by Dr. Boris Katz.

At the other end of the temporal spectrum, WolframAlpha.com is a new natural language search engine that is slated to launch this month.


-D.D.

Lexxe

Lexxe is a natural language search tool, similar to Ask and Powerset. What follows is information from the company website:

Founded in 2005, Lexxe Pty Ltd (ACN: 117 090 454) has been developing a third generation Internet search engine with advanced Natural Language Processing technologies. Our initial research and development of the search engine dated back in October 2004, with the help of a number of supportive individuals. Lexxe is based in Sydney, Australia.

"Lexxe", /leksI/ or pronounced 'leksi', our company name, is derived from a linguistic term "Lexical", which means "related to words". It emphasises the processing of language from the level of words and the meanings associated with them, which is a core issue for Lexxe.

-D.D.