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Schema.org — Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! Agree On Markup Vocabulary
aabelro writes "Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! have decided to propose a common markup vocabulary, Schema.org, based on the Microdata format, simplifying the job of webmasters who want to give meaning to their web pages' content."
Manu Sporny, chair of the W3C group that created RDFa, added his (personal) dissenting opinion about Schema, calling it a 'false choice,' and saying, "The entire Web community should decide which features should be supported – not just Microsoft or Google or Yahoo."
Microsoft will break this one, too.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
One of the reasons why Google was able to tromp AltaVista was that AltaVista's search was based completley on the MetaData tag of the html page, and Google ignored the MetaData tag. The reason why? Website administrator were putting false information into the MetaData tag in hopes of generating more web crawler search hits. Google decided to go off of what was actually being presetned on the page, and we all found that to be more useful.
For those out of the loop: this is funnier when you are aware of a certain alarmingly long schedule proposed by Ian Hickson, which would not see HTML 5 completely finished until 2020 or 2022 depending on your definition.
Incidentally, this problem is similar to why the Athenians abandoned democracy (lack of rapid response) and has been presented as an explanation for why Lisp isn't as popular as it once was (endless disagreements about how to do things.)
The really remarkable part, though, is that they're making any progress at all with HTML5, so some kudos is in order.
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I am a whore and have to do whatever the big guys say, because I want their traffic. Ok, so I admit it.
But dammit, did it have to be microdata? I already mark up with microformat classes and RDFa (both the sortof standardized namespaces and Google's) and Google was handling it pretty well, and every once in a while it looked like Yahoo grokked it too. Microdata was the ugly stepchild third choice, the least well-supported one, with the fewest number of parsers out there in the wild.. So I left that one out, because nobody cared. Now it's going to be The One?
I have better things to do than add Yet Another fucking attribute to my generated HTML which is already bloated with otherwise unnecessary classes and properties and typeofs. Now I'm going to have itemscope and itemtype attributes too, huh? Just how many characters long can we make each element become, just so that everything can make sense of it? Fuck you guys. No seriously, fuck you. Yes, I'm going to do it anyway, but even so, fuck you.
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ooo, snide Perl 6 remark would go here if I were immature
Not really all that remarkable. The main progress comes from the whole WhatWG efforts which in turn is basically the major browser makers saying "Screw you moving-like-molasses people and your incompatible XHTML 2.0, we'll just do things the way we agree to do them and everybody else can follow along or stay behind."
Same story here, except now it's not the major browser makers, but the major search engine companies - who want to be able to more easily index information. Why wait for what webmasters and users want, when your search engine(s) pretty much control the market and the webmaster really has little choice but to either follow along or stay behind?
This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as long as they all get along and the things introduced aren't wonderful in principle but a nightmare in practice (frames, anyone?)
Note that the system used is very much in line with HTML5 veering well away from the XHTML 2.0 changes, in that rather than introducing new elements that a browser or other parser could easily choke on, it introduces new properties which are easily ignored.
ooo, snide Perl 6 remark would go here if I were immature
Perl, wasn't that an early pre-release beta of Python...?
"Three signs shall there be before the end: the duke of atoms shall walk forever, the sixth pearl be released, and the freeman lift his crowbar thrice..."
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
You're right, it is a trap, but it gets worse:
The short summary: The "Sponsors" (read: cartel) may have patents on this crap. You can, for now, use the crap royalty free for markup only if you follow the standard. Non-cartel search engines are not granted such rights. In addition, future versions may not be royalty free. Your existing markup is safe, but any new versions or pages won't be.
The actual fine print:
In addition, if the Sponsors have patent claims that are necessarily infringed by including markup of structured data in a webpage, where the markup is based on and strictly complies with the Schema, they grant an option to receive a license under reasonable and non-discriminatory terms without royalty, solely for the purpose of including markup of structured data in a webpage, where the markup is based on and strictly complies with the Schema. [..] Notwithstanding the foregoing, the Sponsors agree that no change that we make to these Terms of Service will terminate or modify the license granted under paragraph 1 above with respect to any use or implementation of the Schema occurring prior to the date that the change is published.
It doesn't matter what standard they float. It will be dumped in less than five years anyway for the next big gimmick.. I remember a time when real standards would last 50 years or more. You know.. like film, phones, roads, electricity, NTSC, PAL, ohm's law, arithmetic, spelling of words, money...
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone