Practice Management

If you cannot build it, buy it.

If you cannot get your first choice, move on to your second choice.

Neither represents bad advice.

In this regard, Microsoft did not manage to snag Yahoo to launch its revival into Web 2.0 or to compete effectively with Google.  So, according to Silicon Alley Insider, Microsoft has purchased PowerSet.Com, a semantic search engine startup.

We as Third Wave lawyers have entered into the Google era.  Microsoft is going to have to catch on, catch up, and get rid of its more industrial model in order to get on top of this movement.  In short, it is going to have to stop its practice of being so mafioso and predatory, and move outside of the box (literally) in which its increasingly complicated and expensive software comes.

I am not sure that buying Yahoo would have helped much in this regard, but what do I really know.  What I think I do know is that competition is not all bad.  Google has introduced lawyers, and everybody, to the "power of free" and cloud computing.  They are wiring some cities with FREE WiFi.  How does this pan out in the long run?  That is anybody's guess, but to date it has not been a bad things for lawyers who are trying to compete in this less structured world.  If active competition brings more free and easily obtained information and software and communications to attorneys, and to force those who would rather restrict or charge for such things, then that is good.

Semantic search, or "natural language" search, is supposed to divine searchers' intentions more accurately than today's standard offerings, which means Google, and this would have obvious benefits for whoever figures it out.  Some are skeptical as to whether semantic search would be significantly better Google, but if the threat makes Google try even harder that would be just fantastic with me.

Below is a video about PowerSet.