Google finally gets serious about the Semantic Web?

Google has been flirting with the Semantic Web recently, and we've talked about it occasionally on this blog. However, compared with other web search engines (e.g. Yahoo!) and the state of Semantic Web activity generally, Google has been slow to dive in completely. They have restricted themselves to rich snippets, using bits of RDFa and microformats, and making up their own too. Perhaps this was because their intention was always to purchase a prominent Semantic Web start-up company instead of putting in the spade work themselves? Perhaps so.

Google has this week announced the purchase of Metaweb Technologies. None the wiser?! Metaweb is perhaps most known for providing the Semantic Web community with Freebase. Freebase cropped up last year on this blog when we discussed the emergence of Common Tags. Freebase essentially represents a not insignificant hub in the rapidly expanding Linked Data cloud, providing RDF data on 12 million entities with URIs linking to other linked and Semantic Web datasets, e.g. DBpedia.

My comments are limited to the above; just thought this was probably an extremely important development and one to watch. A high level of social proof appears to be required before some tech firms or organisations will embrace the Semantic Web. But what greater social proof than Google? Google also appear committed to the Freebase ethos:

"[We] plan to maintain Freebase as a free and open database for the world. Better yet, we plan to contribute to and further develop Freebase and would be delighted if other web companies use and contribute to the data. We believe that by improving Freebase, it will be a tremendous resource to make the web richer for everyone. And to the extent the web becomes a better place, this is good for webmasters and good for users."

Very significant stuff indeed.