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Google has acquired Metaweb Technologies, a startup that is ambitiously building a sort of database of all the web’s information called Freebase. Freebase is an open, Creative Commons licensed repository of structured data that currently covers some 12 million entities. An entity is a single person, place, or thing. What Freebase does is connects those entities together, which enables search to be a bit more contextual and smarter:
Google will use Metaweb/Freebase to help it’s search engine with less-easy-to-understand search queries by getting a better understanding of the entities within Freebase and, more importantly, how they relate to each other. Most computers still have very little understanding of what they’re actually doing, technologies like this arm computers with previously unavailable relationship information – meaning a more accurate and contextual result can be calculated almost entirely on the basis of an existing algorithm.
Google’s acquisition of Metawab is another step on the road to a Semantic Web where machine-readable metadata will enable automated agents and other software to access the Web more intelligently. Those agents would be able to perform tasks automatically and locate related information on behalf of the user.
More on Google’s vision for futures search here.
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