Google's step into Semantic Web - genuine move or a dodge to avoid criticism?

About two months ago Google started to promote two Semantic Web techniques, RDFa and Microformats. We were delighted - finally, with Google doing so, we saw the efforts of all previous trailblazers coming to the fruition. We believed that the first, indeed small step Google did, would be a real leap into the direction of Web 3.0 or, as I used to call it, "Web full of Meaning". Maybe it is still to soon to see the fruits, but we should already see some buds. We don't.

After some reflection and a scrutiny applied to Google's "Rich Snippets" page, or "Structured Data Page" where they announced the support, one can really be disappointed. The simple, I would say - primitive ontology they used (their own data-vocabulary.org) is very strange for its mean scope of concepts. The decision to allow first only for semantic descriptions of reviews is strange and forces us to ask the question: What the heck they are doing?

It seems they did not notice the role of such respected yet also simple, ontologies like Dublin Core Metadata, or when it comes to people - Foaf....

Ian Davis in his post, calls it straight: Google’s RDFa a Damp Squib :-)
I support Ian fully. I try to be far from conspiracy theories, but the way Google steeped into the arena of SW, seems to be more to postpone its advance, than to promote it....

So disappointing ...

Old wisdom never dies ...

See the amazing part of an amazing 2007 article: "Who is afraid of the GGG?" (here)

"making a landline phone call will now be ‘unSkyping’,
Post-It notes will henceforth be called ‘retro-Twitters’,
going outside will now be ‘outdoorsing’,
a paperback book will be known as a ‘Kindle Alpha’
and ....
Wednesdays will be Day 3.0. "

isn't it lovely and ... full of truth about our hubris to invent new pseudo-real-concepts ???

:-)

Birth of new Web: Giant-Global-Graph or GGG

We probably witness the birth of the new Web. At least someone named it. From the dawn of civilization we know that TO NAME is very often equivalent of TO KNOW.

Moses, facing the burning bush, asks G-d about His name, in a conviction that he must pass His name to his fellows, even though they had known Him already. And when the name is uttered, Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh — "I Will Be Who I Will Be" — there are no more questions that they have Infinite Power and Infinite Kindness behind them. The very notion of the name — the mystery hidden in it's letters — explained everything.

I try to avoid pompous air in my post — but I do have a feeling we have a birth of the new Web. And the name of it: GIANT-GLOBAL-GRAPH is much more appealing than "Semantic Web". In some sense I'm eager to drop my own-coined term "Web full of Meaning", though I like it very much and despite the fact it had a very cute, allegoric meaning in my mother's tongue: "Sieć pełna znaczeń".

But GGG concept is great because it can simply become this last click on the ratchet in the making of the new machinery of the web of data. Imagine, if we would adopt a habit of naming semantic information on our website as ggg.domain_name.suffix. For example, imagine that in addition to www.makolab.com, ggg.makolab.com would keep the entries to all semantically enabled data that could describe what are the resources at www.makolab.com and more. Anyone technical enough would immediately notice, that there is no mistery about domain names starting with "ggg", like there is nothing special about those starting with "www" — both humbly point to some resource. However, like www.makolab.com is for human visual perception, ggg.makolab.com would be for machines or softaware agents to discover what the site is all about.

Imagine that at ggg.sopekmir.blogspot.com you would find my FOAF definition, the RSS channels and all other semantic information related to my blog. And so on...

GGG was introduced in Tim-Berners-Lee blog post almost 1,5 years ago, but it didn't rise enough attention yet. There are few interesting blog posts here and there. See this as an example and very interesting another one. The fact that Wikipedia article is so short is also discouriging.
Maybe, because of the context - GGG was about Social Networks

But, as Tim wrote: "We can use the word Graph, now, to distinguish from Web." and for good - the Web is a web of documents, the Graph is a web of data, linked and full of meaning.

For both machines and us, mere mortals....

If you are new to the field, read good Wikipedia article about Semantic Web.

For Tim Berners Lee original vision expressed in simple words, read this article.

For the best introduction into Sematic Web, get "Semantic Web for Dummies" for your bed reading :-)