Berners-Lee predicts Google will fall to power of the semantic Web
By Dave Parrack
As the man who invented the World Wide Web and helped turn the Internet in to a utility that many of us couldn’t go a day without, Tim Berners-Lee deserves to be listened to. So when he talks about the semantic web, and how huge companies such as Google, Yahoo!, and MySpace will be left behind, I believe him.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989 while working at CERN in Switzerland, but is now looking beyond his work, and to a future in which every part of the Web is seamlessly linked.
This Web of the future that Berners-Lee is imagining is commonly known as ‘the semantic Web’, a constantly evolving but seamlessly linked collection of applications and data collecting tools. In essence, everything will work with everything else, enabling Web users to run their whole lives online.
According to Times Online, Berners-Lee sees the semantic web as displacing Google in the future as the pre-eminent brand on the Internet. However good a job Google currently does at searching the Web, and collating various forms of data, the possibilites in the future mean Google will surely be superseded by a company that harnesses the power of new web-based technologies.
“Using the semantic web, you can build applications that are much more powerful than anything on the regular web,”
“Imagine if two completely separate things — your bank statements and your calendar — spoke the same language and could share information with one another. You could drag one on top of the other and a whole bunch of dots would appear showing you when you spent your money.”
“If you still weren’t sure of where you were when you made a particular transaction, you could then drag your photo album on top of the calendar, and be reminded that you used your credit card at the same time you were taking pictures of your kids at a theme park. So you would know not to claim it as a tax deduction.”
“It’s about creating a seamless web of all the data in your life.”
Web 2.0 sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Digg and Google Maps are a step towards this Web of the future, but all only offer one type of mash-up or layer of usability. If Berners-Lee and the other advocates of the semantic Web are correct in their predictions, then there will be no need for these sites, as our lives will available like a stream of consciousness on the Internet.
Google could of course be just the company to use and even push this power of the Web, and make it a reality, but the chances are, within a decade, we’ll all be dancing to a different tune.
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March 16th, 2008
I love the idea, but Tim and crew have been talking about this for years and years, and years. It is starting to sound like less of an idea and more an ideal, some web nirvana way off in the future.
December 23rd, 2008
This would sound far more impressive if he went straight to the idea of taking a photo album and putting it on my bank statements. Will the calendar have to be some weird middleman program? If so, that’s not unlike what we have today.