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> Modern search engines have largely figured out how to provide a fairly high-level ontology equivalent to this use-case by simply parsing out the content on th

> Modern search engines have largely figured out how to provide a fairly high-level ontology equivalent to this use-case by simply parsing out the content on the pages and centrally storing it. If google opens up it's index to the world so you could use it as an api to query the web with the power of a relational DB, the case for semantic web would probably be pointless. But it's locked and only serves there ad system. I'm not defending Semantic Web per say, but because the lack structure in the web makes it only 'parsable' by gigantic entities like google. Their work is remarkable and they offer a nice service I can consume. But I can't really build on it. I think the debate should shift from the means to the goals... Semantic web might not be the right way to do it, but I strongly believe in the necessity of a way to (openly) connect the dots of all that data or it's a giant waste. What are the relational stores you mention in a) ?

bane 12y ago
> I think the debate should shift from the means to the goals Yes yes yes. The conversation needs to change from "if we build the Semantic Web it will change everything" (where everything is unspecified and not discussed) to we need to do this, what do we need to do it. > What are the relational stores you mention in a) ? Behind most modern on-line connected websites there's a big Postgres/Oracle/SQL Server database somewhere (and increasingly non-relational no-SQL type of stores). The SW basically chose to turn the web into a giant federated RDF triple-store which, if you think about it, is kind of ridiculous from any kind of sensible performance POV, just accessing the information from the source, the databases that are used to generate the pages, seems to make more sense.