4 ms·

The irony here is that Google was built on the light semantics of the hyperlink: the anchor tag is the semantic web, giving you information that a server-side i

The irony here is that Google was built on the light semantics of the hyperlink: the anchor tag is the semantic web, giving you information that a server-side image map or Java applet or Flash movie or JS-driven navigation couldn't reliably identify without putting a hell of a lot more effort into your crawler. There were probably always limits to how widely useful (or adopted) a single coherent set of resource definitions / markup conventions could have been, but for all the early value demonstrated by Google itself it sure seems like there really wasn't enough thought about the value proposition. > Neither web developers nor web users wanted or needed it, Users want search, first without having to put too much thought into modeling what they're looking for, then maybe with some additional options with an intuition or understanding of how results might be improved. They might not know how the semantic web could help with that any more than they know how Ruby helps their application exist, and it makes about as much sense to say users don't care about the semantic web as they don't care about Ruby. Both are potential waiting to be realized into an experience. Developers, on the other hand, don't have anywhere near as good an excuse.

evrydayhustling 6y ago
> light semantics of the hyperlink: the anchor tag is the semantic web, giving you information that a server-side image map or Java applet or Flash movie or JS-driven navigation couldn't reliably identify This, 100x. Complex and precise ontologies don't survive a distributed environment because communication is competitive. Publishers don't seek to describe themselves "accurately" (as if everyone could agree what that means), they seek to attract a certain type of attention in maximum quantities. The protocols that survive that policy framework are those that "carry their own weight" for both listeners (by compressing information that would be hard to get) and publishers (by allowing sufficient expression to pursue selfish ends without lying). Hyperlinks nail this trade off (at least well enough that pagerank successfully trims the noise). But Semantic Web gave little incentive for publishers to represent themselves, accurately or at all.
- xnx 6y ago
  Great point. Individual publishers are to be trusted so little in describing their own content that Google completely ignores the keywords meta tag (and also description now I think).
Soshreektricks 6y ago
'Users want search, first without having to put too much thought into modeling what they're looking for' But Ads ? And to the next one phrasing: 'light semantics...' But google want it (company-patented) exclusive for themself ? left me confused... (-;
- detaro 6y ago
  > left me confused... is what your comment does to me. Could you expand what you are trying to say?

evrydayhustling 6y ago

> light semantics of the hyperlink: the anchor tag is the semantic web, giving you information that a server-side image map or Java applet or Flash movie or JS-driven navigation couldn't reliably identify This, 100x. Complex and precise ontologies don't survive a distributed environment because communication is competitive. Publishers don't seek to describe themselves "accurately" (as if everyone could agree what that means), they seek to attract a certain type of attention in maximum quantities. The protocols that survive that policy framework are those that "carry their own weight" for both listeners (by compressing information that would be hard to get) and publishers (by allowing sufficient expression to pursue selfish ends without lying). Hyperlinks nail this trade off (at least well enough that pagerank successfully trims the noise). But Semantic Web gave little incentive for publishers to represent themselves, accurately or at all.

xnx 6y ago
Great point. Individual publishers are to be trusted so little in describing their own content that Google completely ignores the keywords meta tag (and also description now I think).

Soshreektricks 6y ago

'Users want search, first without having to put too much thought into modeling what they're looking for' But Ads ? And to the next one phrasing: 'light semantics...' But google want it (company-patented) exclusive for themself ? left me confused... (-;

detaro 6y ago
> left me confused... is what your comment does to me. Could you expand what you are trying to say?