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Why the Semantic Web Will Fail
Jack Action writes "A researcher at Canada's National Research Council has a provocative post on his personal blog predicting that the Semantic Web will fail. The researcher notes the rising problems with Web 2.0 — MySpace blocking outside widgets, Yahoo ending Flickr identities, rumors Google will turn off its search API — and predicts these will also cripple Web 3.0." From the post: "The Semantic Web will never work because it depends on businesses working together, on them cooperating. There is no way they: (1) would agree on web standards (hah!) (2) would adopt a common vocabulary (you don't say) (3) would reliably expose their APIs so anyone could use them (as if)."
No, this is about the SOAP API being replaced by a less flexible AJAX API. Never used either of them to be honest, but that's because I don't have any real need for them. When it comes to the content of my own websites (or rather my customers websites), I'd much rather prefer relying on my own database than an index google made.
You're absolutely kidding me, right?
When was the last time you attempted to search for a product review and didn't have to sift through a crapload of spam and sales responses?
Not to mention now there is so much crap out there now that the odds of a page having all of my search terms on it, and still being completely irrelevant (or spam), is pretty high.
Being able to specify the type of result you want (review, sales, etc) would make search actually useful.
The Semantic Web was first proposed by Berners-Lee in 1999. According to Wikipedia, blogging first gained in popularity in 1994. Care to explain how blogging "stemmed from" the Semantic Web 5 years before it was even proposed?
Best essay on the topic I have come across: http://www.well.com/~doctorow/metacrap.htm