View from the Corner Office: CognitionSearch
Every Wednesday, we take a trip to visit an Alternative Search Engine’s CEO at his or her corner office, and get the latest on their project, entirely from their perspective. This week we visited Scott Jarus, CEO of Cognition Technologies, Inc.
“Cognition, based in Santa Monica, CA, has created the next evolution in
Search technology. Through our patented linguistic Search architecture, known as CognitionSearch™, we are able to deliver significantly higher levels of relevant search results than is possible with currently used Search technologies. Our Linguistic Search technology employs a unique mix of linguistics and mathematical algorithms which has, in effect, “taught” the computer the meanings of nearly all the words and frequent phrases within the common English language. Unlike all of the popular Search engines in use today, which utilize statistically-based pattern-matching technology (i.e. they search for a particular word pattern), CognitionSearch understands the meaning within the context of the user’s query and within the universe of possible Search results. Therefore, the results delivered to the user are more precise, relevant and complete.
Web 3.0 and beyond!
As any user of the Web knows, Search is a critical application which drives access to information and commerce. While generalized Search (i.e. looking for a quick answer to a question, such as where to buy an item) may be a satisfactory experience for most users, it is apparent to anyone who has tried to dig deeper into a particular subject that the experience is inefficient and overwhelming. The amount and types of data contained on the Web continue to grow and evolve at an astounding rate. Therefore, the need for more efficient and effective “deep Search” capabilities has become increasingly important.
Additionally, the Web itself is continuing to evolve. What was once a Web dominated by static Websites and generalized portals (Web 1.0), has now become an ecology which contains social networks and content (Web 2.0). The “wisdom of crowds” is now a key element of the Web, which brings with it the ambiguity and complexity of cultural language. No longer is the Web a fairly structured set of data – it is now as richly unstructured as human society itself. As we move into the next phase of the Web’s development with intelligent agents and early-stage artificial intelligence (Web 3.0 and beyond), the need for “semantic understanding” becomes an absolute requirement.
Enter Cognition Technology and its evolutionary linguistic meaning-based Search technology, CognitionSearch. Developed over the past 20 years by experts in computational linguistics and computer science, CognitionSearch is moving Search into Web 3.0 (the Semantic Web).
The Search Experience
Users of Search technology are faced with increasing amount of data “underload” and “overload”. Data underload, or poor recall, refers to the fact that current Search technology is unable to retrieve the vast majority of the relevant Search results from the universe of data because the technology does not understand the meaning of the user’s query (remember: they only search for word patterns). In other words, unless the specific word or words used in the query appear in a document, popular Search engines will not retrieve the document. Therefore synonymous words and concepts are ignored
Data overload, or poor precision, is an inverse cousin of data underload. In data overload, the user is presented with many Search results which are irrelevant to his or her particular query because the Search engine is unable to distinguish between the different meanings of a word (i.e. word ambiguity).
CognitionSearch solves both the data underload and data overload problems by attaching meaning and linguistic science to the user’s queries and the universe of results. This enables CognitionSearch to successfully discern the ambiguity of words (i.e. selecting the proper meaning from the set of multiple meanings for the same words), and the synonymy of words (i.e. multiple words with similar meanings) based upon the context of how they are used in the query and the search results.
The Google-killers; fighting in the streets!
There have been a few recent entrants into the Web Search marketplace who proclaim that they are developing their own meaning-based Search technology – sometimes referred to as “natural language” or “semantic” Search technology. It appears that their technology goals are substantially the same as ours, however, there are two big differences: (1) Our meaning-based Search technology already exists and it took 20 years to develop (that’s quite a head-start); and (2) these new entrants describe a desire to be “Google killers” – we have no desire to kill Googleor any of the other pattern-matching Web Search engines. Instead, we believe that CognitionSearch would be an excellent augmentation to basic pattern-matching Search technology by providing the user with an ability to dig deeper into a subject than is possible with basic Search. We’d rather partner with a large basic Search engine than fight them in the streets.
$ Making Money $
CognitionSearch is currently a “free” offering to the public. Once sufficient content and user critical mass has been established, traditional Web advertising will be added to the site which has the potential of generating significant revenues. The Company is also exploring “sponsored content”. This would involve a specialized content category (e.g. Patents) being sponsored by a corporation with an interest in marketing their products and/or services to users of this category. prosumers <notcon-sumers; get it? -ed> may be willing to pay a reasonable monthly subscription fee ($5 -$10 per month) to have access to CognitionSearch’s technology. In this regard, it may be possible to establish a trial offering to introduce these prosumers to the power of CognitionSearch’s technology, and then up-sell them to a subscription model.
Conclusion
Cognition, through its breakthrough linguistic Search technology, is on the cusp of becoming the most disruptive technology to impact the Web since Search engines were first introduced. The technology qualitatively advances Search to a new level, which addresses the needs of a growing user base who have come to rely on the vast amount of data available to them, but who are frustrated by their inability to derive information, knowledge and understanding from the torrents of data they are presented with by current Search technologies.
Our motto is, “Search Less. Find More.™”
