[Pointrel-discuss] Google's Rich Snippets Starts the Semantic Snowball Effect | Digital Media Buzz

[Paul D. F. <pdf...@ku...>]

http://www.digitalmediabuzz.com/2009/06/googles-rich-snippets-snowball/
"Almost lost in May’s whirlwind launches of Wolfram|Alpha and Microsoft’s 
Bing and the unveiling of Google Wave, was a quieter announcement that may 
bring a seismic shift toward the realization of Web 3.0. While some aspects 
of the next generation of the Web are taking place, there are major physical 
and cultural challenges to bring it about. Google’s launch of Rich Snippets 
may well be a watershed moment in resolving these problems. ...
This may resonate with some in the Semantic Web community; a number have 
seen the task of retrofitting the current Web into machine-friendly markup 
so daunting that the global database might need to be built from scratch. 
But on face value, Wolfram|Alpha violates one of the cardinal precepts of 
the Semantic Web: that the proprietary hoarding of databases behind walls 
must end — data must flow freely from and to all sources.
And the vision of W3C’s Semantic Web isn’t to replace the current Web, but 
to enhance it. The question is how to get the work done. There was no 
organized plan to build the Web. To be sure, there were plans to create the 
technology and the infrastructure. But most of those tens of billions of 
indexed Web pages were built by corporations, small businesses, non-profits 
and individuals, each for their own reasons. Persuading websites to recode 
Web pages to Semantic Web specifications — or even to do so going forward — 
will take a powerful motivator.
Google breaks the ice
Google may have provided such a motivator with its May 12 announcement of 
Rich Snippets. “Snippet” is the name Google uses for the short block of text 
appearing below a search result, giving more information about the Web page. 
  Google announced in its Webmasters Central Blog (a bookmark for anyone 
interested in making his or her website more visible to the leading search 
engine) that it is now applying Google’s algorithms to “highlight structured 
data embedded in web pages.” Translation, content marked for the Semantic 
Web. The “rich snippets” will be based on the structured data."

--Paul Fernhout