When Google attacks

A year or so ago, Google was promoting schema.org, one attempt to make the semantic web real.

Now they’re not. It’s not even integrated into Chrome. Why the change?

Well, for one thing…

The Semantic Web will make search engines unimportant. Search engines exist for one purpose only, which is to guess at which web pages have the content you want. With semantic markup, there’s no longer guessing.

If the site isn’t spam, the contents are as they are indicated. Then the only question is whether it’s popular enough to make Google’s top ten, which will be accomplished through advertising in traditional media. So much for the internet as an “alternative.”

Google is going to lose a ton of money if the semantic web ever works. Any fool can make a search engine based on semantic categories and location. That’s not rocket science and probably is a matter of cobbling together open source software packages at this point.

When that happens, Google has nothing to offer. That’s why they’re reversing course here. The semantic web, like the original web, is not commerce-friendly. And the commerce doesn’t want to give up easily.

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