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Why the Semantic Web Will Fail

Posted by kdawson on from the coopetition dept.

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)."

3 of 179 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Google by discord5 · · Score: 2, Informative

    What are those rumors about Google who would be closing their search API ? Are we talking about the boxes we can put on our sites to make a search in Google ?

    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.

  2. Re:"Why the semantic web will fail" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    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?

  3. It has already been known for a long time... by giuntag · · Score: 2, Informative

    Best essay on the topic I have come across: http://www.well.com/~doctorow/metacrap.htm