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Google acquires semantic search company Metaweb
19
Jul
Jul
Search engine giant Google has acquired semantic search start-up Metaweb.
Metaweb and its Freebase
Founded in 2005, Metaweb Technologies is a Californian-based company that develops Freebase, a free, massive, and collaboratively edited database of cross-linked data, in order to create a system for building the semantic web.
Freebase allows anyone to contribute, structure, search, copy and use data. The database has information on over 12 million things, including movies, books, TV shows, celebrities, locations, companies and more.
Metaweb actually helps site owners, bloggers, and developers make their sites richer. It enables them to easily and intelligently add content from across the Web. In this way, they can access third party content from leading sources like Twitter, Hulu, and many more.
Check out this video presenting Metaweb and its Freebase:
Google to improve search
By acquiring Metaweb, Google clearly wants to improve its own search offerings. Metaweb's Freebase contains millions of tagged data which will help make Google search smarter.
Understanding queries and web pages is necessary to improve search. As you know, the web isn’t only words, it’s information about things in the real world. Google wants to understand the relationships between real-world entities in order to deliver relevant information more quickly.
A few weeks ago, Dassault Systèmes acquired French search engine Exalead also involved in semantic processing.
French search engine Exalead acquired by Dassault Systèmes
9
Jun
Jun
Dassault Systèmes, a leader in 3D and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions, acquires Exalead, a French search engine for about €135 million.
Exalead, the 'French Google'
Founded in 2000 by search engine pioneers, Exalead is a global providers of Search Platforms and Search-Based Applications (SBA) for consumer and business users.
Among Exalead’s worldwide clients, there are leading companies such as PriceWaterhouseCooper and Michelin. More than 100 million unique visitors use Exalead’s technology for search each month.
The company is involved in the Quaero project, an European technology consortium, mainly funded by the French government to develop multimedia search tools.
Reshaping the search engine landscape
Exalead has a platform to apply advanced semantic processing to Web-scale data. It brings structure, meaning and accessibility to previously unused or under-utilized data in the disparate information cloud.
Contrary to other search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo, Exalead is not largely known from the public yet.
Nevertheless, its thumbnail previews of the target pages along with the results, and its advanced refining on the results page (language, geographic location, file type, categories) seem very interesting tools to me.
