Google acquired Metaweb and the Freebase knowledge base

The search startup Metaweb , which developed web semantic markup technologies and maintained Freebase’s open knowledge base (12 million people, places and objects connected to each other), was bought by Google last week. It seems that the search giant has finally matured to implement the futuristic technologies of the Semantic Network, which have been discussed since 2006 on Habré .

As is known, the Semantic Network implies the introduction of a new format for marking web documents that are convenient for machine processing. Thus, any text can be perceived by the machine as a set of facts and hierarchical concepts, and the entire Internet will reach the level of Web 3.0, turning into a single distributed and constantly updated database.

Metaweb representatives sincerely assure that nothing will happen to Freebase after their company is absorbed by the search giant. Moreover, they promise to make the project even more open, and in support of this they began to upload database dumps for download weekly, rather than quarterly, as before.

The official Google blog says that thanks to collaboration with experts from Metaweb, the search engine will be able to better answer questions like [actors over 40 who received at least one Oscar] or [college on the west coast for less than $ 30,000 a year].
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Interestingly, the Metaweb database is used in the Bing search engine to provide answers over organic results (the Instant Answers feature). In general, Metaweb can hardly be called a start-up in the usual sense of the word, because the company was founded in 2005 and has so far received an investment of $ 60 million.