It's big news for the wider Semantic Web community, as it shows that Google is determined to extract better semantics from pages it crawls ... but it's mediocre news for the LOD community. Freebase is based on proprietary database technology, it relies on its own graph data format, is queryable by its own query language (MQL, based on JSON), and makes no commitment to RDf, OWL and SPARQL beyond supporting a SPARQL end-point (in beta).
The best case is that Google is just buying the entity extraction expertise and software deployed by Freebase ... the worst case is that they end up leapfrogging the Semantic Web standards in favour of their own ... C. -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Nathan Sent: Friday, July 16, 2010 9:57 PM To: Semantic Web; Linked Data community Subject: Metaweb joins Google Suprised this one isn't already posted! Metaweb (inc Freebase) has joined google: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/deeper-understanding-with-metaweb.html http://blog.freebase.com/2010/07/16/metaweb-joins-google/ Big (huge) news & congrats to all involved, Best, Nathan This email and any attachments may contain confidential or privileged information and is intended for the addressee only. If you are not the intended recipient, please immediately notify us by email or telephone and delete the original email and attachments without using, disseminating or reproducing its contents to anyone other than the intended recipient. Wolters Kluwer shall not be liable for the incorrect or incomplete transmission of of this email or any attachments, nor for unauthorized use by its employees. Wolters Kluwer nv has its registered address in Alphen aan den Rijn, The Netherlands, and is registered with the Trade Registry of the Dutch Chamber of Commerce under number 33202517.
