In a blog
post yesterday, Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO)'s director of product management, Amit Kumar, provided evidence
of signs of life on planet "Semantic Web."
Kumar, in
the blog, said that Yahoo will begin supporting Semantic Web standards -- starting with microformats -- in its search product.By including Semantic Web identifiers when
indexing content for search, Yahoo will create a richer search
experience for consumers, he says.
Whereas standard search technology is still built to index Websites as well as text according to their
relation to one another, with Semantic Web standards, Yahoo will be able to
capture the meaning of language on the page and index topics according to relevance.
So, while
Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) is spending its time adjusting its search engine for the purpose of
incorporating enhancements like video
ads, Yahoo has taken the first step in moving toward the next phase of the
Web. This is a smart move for Yahoo both as an independent company, and as a
company that -- according to The Wall Street Journal today -- is coming closer and closer to being bought by Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT).
"While
there has been remarkable progress made toward understanding the semantics of
web content, the benefits of a data web have not reached the mainstream
consumer," writes Kumar. "Without a killer semantic web app for consumers, site
owners have been reluctant to support standards like RDF, or even microformats. We believe that app can be
web search."
And by "killer
app," do you happen to mean the app that effectively kills off the Google empire?
Yahoo has a head start in the race to Semantic Web but, this
race is certainly not a sprint as Google will catch up and possibly take the
lead.I would not be surprised if Google
has already something in place because, they have been doing research on
Semantic Web for the last couple of years.Yahoo is in the midst of an unstable business environment and that could
hinder their performance later in this race but, at least they are continuing
to move forward in new innovations.However,
the Google Empire still stands.
I think it is great the Yahoo says they are going to start supporting the W3C standards because it might be the nudge needed to get the Semantic Web going. My only concern is whether RDF has been settled on as the truly best way to proceed with the Semantic Web. There have been alternative approaches suggested such as ICMAUS that may not have been thoroughly explored yet, and if Yahoo is the tipping point for the adoption of Semantic Web standards, there will be no going back.
This may be a bit good move as Google does not have some thing concrete related to the Semantic web on ground but the first thing for Yahoo is to handle the pressure of Microsoft. Secondly, the web/ internet products have interesting usage trend. Many people use Yahoo mail not gmail because Yahoo mail is older than gmail. Similarly Google has gained significant grounds in the web search market that even a new better technology may not posses a real danger for Google as being the leader Google has the resources and the user base to introduce the same or better technology.
As mentioned in the previous post " Let us wait and see"
If this can energize Yahoo in their battle for survival and autonomy, way to go for them. But I don't really see how they are beating Google to Semantic Web. They have not implemented something concrete related to the new search technology yet. It is after that we can say if they are beating Google to Semantic or not. So wait and see.
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