Watch Hyperwords’s pitch at 00:35:15

The selling point is that users can command text online and control the browsing experience in new and interesting ways. Apparently it is what users want and the plugin has been downloaded over a million times already.

Users can select text and then insta-Google it with a simple mouse-click. Wikipedia, Amazon and translation services are also just a click away.

The company will generate revenue through commerce traffic and “useful ads”. They argue that if every word can be a hyperlink, then it can also be an ad. How that actually will work still seems a bit unclear.

Hyperwords grew out of a research project at University College London and has a pretty impressive advisory board, with among others Douglas Engelbart and Vint Cerf as members.

The company doesn’t view Ubiquity as a threat and believes that they will provide a fuller experience for its users.

The service is available as a plug-in for Firefox and will launch a version for Chrome and Safari soon.

Hyperwords gives users a number of choices whenever a piece of text is selected. The options simply pop up – right click functionality remains unchanged.

Options include searching various engines, looking up text in wikipedia and dictionary.com, emailing text, searching on Google Maps, translation, and searching on Amazon and other commerce sites. The search and commerce traffic will generate revenue (my guess is a dollar or so per year per active user). The translation service is incredibly useful.

If you’d like to beta test Hyperwords, email beta@gethyperwords.com.