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 ...

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data

Following the post of David's Wienberger on his excellent blog. I read the article written by some Google's scientists carefully. I must admit - it is fascinating.

First, its title "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data" is fully intentional, admitted reference to “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences” by Eugene Wigner. Nice play with titles, but it is a bit misleading. The role of mathematics in natural science is just the opposite to the role of pure data in human knowledge. I could elaborate on it longer, but - what strikes me deeply, is another thing.

It seems that authors dismiss the message of Semantic Web advocates, among them, Tim Berners-Lee, for reasons that are not very clear.

Let me cite: " (...) But even if we have a formal Semantic Web “Company Name” attribute, we can’t expect to have an ontology for every possible value of this attribute. For example, we can’t know for sure what company the string “Joe’s Pizza” refers to because hundreds of businesses have that name and new ones are being added all the time. We also can’t always tell which business is meant by the string HP.(...)”

Well, in all Semantic Web proposals we do not care what "Joe's Pizza" or "HP" means!

We care about one thing - that "Joe's Pizza" is The Company Name.

We do not need ontology for the name itself, we need it for a different potential "Company Name" concept !!!

Not everything in this article is plainly bad, though.

What I liked, was the call "So, follow the data" - in some vague sense they reaffirmed the principle of least action of Tim Berners Lee. I also must admit, that the distinction of “Semantic Web” from “Semantic Interpretation” is very convincing and it is another good part of the article.

Finally, I often think, that Google would be The One who could push Semantic Web forward. And for some reason they don't.

They could simple cry out loudly: "Hi webmasters around the world - use RDF or microformats to mark your contact/author data and we will use it in our search engine!"

Apart from conspiracy theories, there is something in this article, written by Google researches that justifies their unwillingness to start the ball rolling...

This post was first published as comment on David Weinberger and Seb Schmoller blogs.