Smart search | Columnists | Andrew Wahl | Canadian Business Online

Description

Google may be synonymous with web search, but it sure isn’t perfect. Unless you’re looking for something very specific and pretty simple, exploring larger topics can still be a time-consuming and painstaking process — even if the average web surfer isn’t too put off by it. Other companies, though, have spied this as an opportunity to build better (or at least different) search experiences. Microsoft Corp., for instance, recently launched Bing, which includes a sidebar window that tries to help you hone and refine your search. Other more obscure web services, such as WolframAlpha’s overhyped “computational knowledge engine,” take ambitiously different approaches to finding and presenting information online.

And then there’s Primal Fusion Inc., a low-profile 35-person startup in Waterloo, Ont. Founded in 2004, it is trying to automate how people gather and organize online information. At its core, Primal Fusion’s technology infers meaning from the words used to conduct an online search. Its first application — still at an early stage of development and not even open to the public, yet alone ready for commercialization — takes a ...

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