Semantic Business

I'm Tired of Google's Shell Game

I don't know anyone that can conclusively say what Google's up to with respect to the Semantic Web, so I'm embarking on a small mission to figure this out - or at least shed a little more light. There are more reasons than I can think of for taking a look at this issue, but for starters:

• Android vs. Nokia's raft of SW efforts related to mobile environments, and Nokia's stated strategy of relying on three revenue streams deriving from handsets, Web services, and mobile content.
• Google has a lot of smart people, many of whom are hired out of MIT (probably from the same building where the W3C is headquartered).
• Unconfirmed reports that upon visiting W3C in Cambridge MA one or two years ago, Eric Schmidt commented that there was lots of "good stuff" going on there (but no research contracts were forthcoming).
• I just searched on Google's US hiring page and got zero (0) results after using the following nine terms (one at a time with no operators): rdf, owl, sparql, ontology, semantic, uri (although url only got one result), linked, triple, graph.
• Google's a member of the W3C and since May 1, 2008 nineteen (19) individuals with "@google.com" in their email address have posted on the W3C's public mailing lists (the lists that the working groups use). Some are quite prolific, particularly if they're chairing a working group. Lots of focus on geolocation.

My take is that the search terms have either been scrubbed from the posting results, scrubbed from the job descriptions, or Google just isn't hiring anyone with competencies in the nine areas searched on above. I find this last point unlikely for any forward looking company whose reason for being is the Web itself.

I'll persist in my research and report back - I'll also fill in some links to the points above as well.

In 23 Words, The Semantic Web Is...Updated Jun 6

The Semantic Web is an extension of the World Wide Web designed to standardize the integration of data and the interoperation of applications.

Update Jun 6: Today I had cause to use this definition and I'm not sure, but my questioner (someone who's very well informed Semantics-wise) seemed slightly aghast at my brevity and simplicity. I understand completely. It's not a glowing definition, full of promise, imbued with excitement, and burgeoning with opportunity. That's a deliberate choice on my part. From what I can tell, fulsome descriptions haven't worked very well over the past few years partly because the technology hasn't been ready and partly because buyers like CIOs, CTOs, and IT managers of all kinds have heard such promises a million times before.

As a business person, I want people outside the Semantic community to buy products made with Semantic technology (the market outside the community is way bigger.) From my sales experience I know that superlatives alone won't cut it and they'll probably just erode your credibility. But what seems very apparent and very real is the technology's ability to standardize the integration of data and the interoperation of applications. Outside of these two things, I'm not aware of anything else Semantically related that's occurring in a full blown, commercial production environment. 

Inferencing/reasoning, SPARQL queries (even with public endpoints), and the flashy stuff that's so promising probably occurs on a daily basis in tightly controlled environments that engage in what I consider "exotic" research and are overseen by the most highly trained and sophisticated people in the world when it comes to this particular technology. That's a far cry from closing a million dollar (euro, yen, yuan, take your pick) sale for an enterprise application that will see widespread deployment to a relatively untrained audience.

When the Semantic Web evolves to the point where it can fulfill all the promises that people (me included) have invested in it, I'll change my definition. But for now, in terms of what I believe it can reliably do today, I'll define the technology as above, although I'll probably still refer to the future capabilities just to keep it interesting.

Besides, I truly believe the emphasis needs to be on the product (e.g. solution) and not its underlying technology. When Microsoft sells Word or Excel, it doesn't emphasize the use of C and Visual Basic (I admit there are exceptions to this) because that's not what people really care about. They want to be able to create documents and work with numbers. It's that simple.