Google gets new search engine challenger

Cambridge-based company thinks it can do better

17 September 2008 16:35 GMT / By Stuart Miles

Google has a new challenger to its search crown, but this time, rather than Yahoo or Microsoft, it's a small Cambridge-based company called True Knowledge.

The plan, the company hopes, is to let people ask questions in a more "human way" and then provide them answers to the questions they've asked rather than just picking out keywords.

"Traditionally, search engines use statistical relationships between words to find documents and web pages that maybe relevant to the subject of the search. It is then up to users to sift through these results to obtain an answer to their initial query", says William Tunstall-Pedoe, the founder of the new search engine.

Currently in private beta, the site will pull answers to the questions posed from a database it has built-up itself rather than scouring any old site on the web, but will still be using reference-based sites like Wikipedia for additional support.

"We are currently understanding about 70% of the questions posed and of that we are currently answering around 40% with a correct answer", a spokesperson for the company told Pocket-lint.

"If we don't have an answer we still give you search results from other search engines", our man from the company said.

True Knowledge is expected to enter public beta in 2009, however the company will be offering an API for other search engines to use the technology.

Is the plan just to sell it to Google?

The spokesperson we talked to blushed before ruling nothing out, either way the new technology that worked when we gave it fact based questions - like "who is the current Prime Minister of the UK?" - should make your web searching easier when it eventually launches next year.