Google Metaweb Deal: Is Google’s Internal R&D Not Delivering? , Stephen E Arnold, Newsbreaks (Jul 26)
Stephen Arnold probably has more insight into the strategies of Google than any other analyst - here's his take on Google's purchase of Metaweb.
"Google's recent purchase of semantic database start-up Metaweb may suggest a broken research program. Google bought a company with a large open source term list known as Freebase and technology to identify people, places, and things. Google invested in next generation content processing with its hiring of high profile IBM researcher Ramanathan Guha and a promising content processing company several years ago. With the deal for Metaweb, are Google's internal engineering solutions not up to snuff? Has the rise of Facebook tightened the thumbscrews on Google's paws? Or is it more of a managerial issue?"
Posted by Gwen at August 1, 2010 10:52 AM