Google Ups its Stakes in the Search 2.0 Race

Afortnight ago, I commented that ‘Google deserves to enjoy a brief whiff of schadenfreud’ beforeStephen Wolframlaunches his computational knowledge engine in May. Well, Google appear to have pipped him to the post in the first round of Search 2.0, although the actual finishing line in the web search race is still nowhere in sight. Of course, it might not exist at all.

Google have unveiled this week, asmarter searchwhich, according to theBBC News item‘uses semantic web technology’.Smarter searchuses any embedded metadata in a web page – metadata in RDF mark-up as well as conventional META tags – to seek and gather information related to the search query, and to display it with each hit in what they call a ‘rich snippet’. Not a Wolfram-blaster on its own. But there’s more.

Google also unveiledGoogle Squared, which collates information – text-based, numerical, graphical – and displays it in summary form, e.g. a table. Showing a command of smoke-and-mirrors communication rivalling that of politicians, Google spokesperson Marissa Mayer explained:

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