Microsoft Funding Gay
Cruises?

Times are good for young tech entrepreneur Lorenzo Thione, an Italian wiz whose search-engine company Powerset was recently purchased by Microsoft for $100 million.

Neal Broverman

Neal Broverman is the Editorial Director, Print of Pride Media, publishers of The Advocate, Out, Out Traveler, and Plus, spending more than 20 years in journalism. He indulges his interest in transportation and urban planning with regular contributions to Los Angeles magazine, and his work has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times and USA Today. He lives in the City of Angels with his husband, children, and their chiweenie.

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Neal Broverman

March 24 2009 12:00 AM EST

November 17 2015 5:28 AM EST

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Times are good for young tech entrepreneur Lorenzo Thione, an Italian wiz whose search-engine company Powerset was recently purchased by Microsoft for $100 million.

The Silicon Valley gossip site Valleywag just published a photo of Thione wearing a formfitting blue-and-white bathing suit, posing with two friends in front of Celebrity Cruises' Solstice ship. According to Valleywag, the boat was docked somewhere in the Caribbean in the midst of a gay cruise.

Powerset is a natural-language search engine, a site that can find targeted answers to questions. Using such a site would allow people to find answers to questions like "Why is the sky blue?" by typing that question into the search field, as opposed to current engines like Google and Yahoo, which simply search for words or phrases. Microsoft purchased the San Francisco-based Powerset on August 1, 2008. Thione founded Powerset with the Los Angeles-born Barney Pell in 2005.