There are some real and difficult problems the Semantic Web tries to solve, like finding a common language to talk about things and automate information discove

There are some real and difficult problems the Semantic Web tries to solve, like finding a common language to talk about things and automate information discovery, merging and interpretation. This may become even more relevant with trends like the IoT (how smart can that be if every company uses its own home-bred standards and the devices can't automatically understand (and react to) each other? This also applies to Robotics / AI. I'm really not sure the Semantic Web is on a good road there, but they are actually thinking about those hard (and interesting) problems. There is at least one project where I can see true value, even today: Schema.org (http://schema.org/ http://schema.org/). And if you're only creating semantic annotations, it really isn't that difficult. Sadly, to smartly combine and make real value out of Semantic Web Data you probably need to be a BIG company like Google.