> would it be correct to say the issue is Google isn't releasing their new data for free? How about: Google shut-down a knowledge-base that was curated by a co

> would it be correct to say the issue is Google isn't releasing their new data for free? How about: Google shut-down a knowledge-base that was curated by a community, that provided regular data dumps, an online interface and an API - all with an open license (the original data source is nevertheless Wikipedia et al). Google's new venture is basically the same core technology and data but the crawler run also over the scrapped web content. And the only access for non-Googlers is via an API. Make your own conclusion from that.