While what Powerset has done is technically impressive and fun to use, I don’t think it will have staying power, because it attacks the wrong problem. The future of search is not “a better search box and 10 results”. General purpose search is done. Even assuming one can deliver “better search results” (arguable in the case of Powersearch), how will it win out over the reach and brand power of Google? Answer: it won’t.

I think the future of search is task-centric information access that supports both findability and exploration in the context of specific objectives – say, finding a new book to read, deciding what neighborhood to move to, getting your next job, deciding where to eat, etc. The shortcoming of major search engines is that, while they can happily parse your query and give you some web pages to read, they have no idea what you are trying to accomplish – and therefore cannot adapt their experience to support your task.