Powerset vs. Google? NO! Amazon EC2 vs. the Googleplex
Powerset is a BIG fan of Amazon: BUT, does Powerset have a love hate relationship with Google?
After all, while the “semi-stealth startup” based on the technologies of others hopes to be better than Google, it also wants to be bought out by Google! Whichever comes first, then?
Way back on January 1, when the Powerset “trio of Internet entreprenuers” publicly declared their intent to “out-Google Google,” thanks to licensed ”breakthrough” technology and outsourced infrastructure, I countered: Serious competition necessitates not only “breakthrough” concepts, but serious, proprietary, in-house assets.
The Powerset goal is to “deliver better answers than any other search engine, including Google.” To achieve that, it is relying on proprietary engineering and technology resources, those of others that is: Palo Alto Research Center, Inc. (PARC) and Amazon, Inc. notably.
Powerset could not exist or function without both its “licensing agreement, patent licenses and long-term colaboration agreement” with PARC and its contractual arrangement with Amazon’s Elastic Cloud Compute services.
Powerset on why it relies on Amazon Web Services to power its attack on Google:
In the past, the upfront capital required to build out a datacenter big enough to scour the entire Web and serve queries for millions of users was a significant barrier to seriously competing with companies like Google.
YES! That is what gives Google a competitive advantage, as I underscored yesterday in asserting that IT DOES MATTER, contrary to Nick Carr’s pronouncements. SEE: What Commodity IT? Google Buys Strategic Engineering, Wal-Mart Too
IT matters to Google, to the tune of billions of dollars in ongoing investments:
From the beginning, Google’s developers recognized that providing the fastest, most accurate results required a new kind of server setup. Whereas most search engines ran off a handful of large servers tha often slowed under peak loads, Google employed linked PCs to quickly find each query’s answer. The inovation paid off in faster response times, greater scalability and lower costs. It’s an idea that others have since copied, while Google has continued to refine its back-end technology to make it even more efficient.
Powerset may admire Google’s data center build out, but it can’t afford to compete head on from such an infrastructure angle.
Nevertheless, while the Web world impatiently waits for Powerset to actually launch, Powerset itself may be patiently waiting for a Google buyout, as I reported last month following Powerset’s TecCrunch40 “launch.” SEE: Powerset Reveals Strategy: Sell Out to Google by 2009
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