My good friend Tac Anderson sent a Twitter out the other day about a “Semantic Search” site called Hakia, and told me to go check it out. Apparently, all the VC’s and technogeeks were down at the Web 2.0 Summit drooling over this cool “new” technology. My bet is that the VCs will dump tons, and tons of money into this (actually the VC Task Force has already held a conference on Semantic Search), and they won’t get much of anything out of it. Here’s why.

Let’s do a little test.

Open up your browser, and go to Google. Let’s type in a simple, “semantic” search. How about, “When was Abraham Lincoln Born?” After Google gives you three books on Lincoln, you get a real simple result at the top that says, “Abraham Lincoln — Date of Birth: 12 February 1809.”

Now let’s try Ask.com. WOW! I’m not even through typing my query and it is already suggesting, “When was Abraham Lincoln born?” That is COOL! Ok, I select that, and what do I get? HOLY COW!!! Not only is the first result his date of birth, but here is EXACTLY what the search result says: Abraham Lincoln was born February 12, 1809.

So Google told me the date of Lincoln’s birthday, and Ask.com even stated it in a sentence, what could Hakia do for me? I have high expectations. Let’s check it out.

Ok. I enter my search, and here is what I get . . . ooooo, I can’t wait . . . here it is: “Biography
Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809-April 15, 1865).”

So there it is folks SEMANTIC SEARCH!!!!!

Big deal.

(sorry Tac!!)