Freebase (database)
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Freebase was a large collaborative
During its existence, Freebase data was available for
On 16 December 2014, Google announced that it would shut down Freebase over the succeeding six months and help with the move of the data from Freebase to Wikidata.[1]
On 16 December 2015, Google officially announced the Knowledge Graph API, which is meant to be a replacement to the Freebase API. Freebase.com was officially shut down on 2 May 2016.[6][2]
Both Graphd and MQL, the graph database and JSON-based query language developed by Metaweb for Freebase, are open-sourced by Google under the Apache 2.0 license, and are available on GitHub. Graphd is open-sourced on September 8, 2018.[7] MQL is open-sourced on August 4, 2020.[8]
Overview
On 3 March 2007 Metaweb announced Freebase, describing it as "an open shared database of the world's knowledge", and "a massive, collaboratively edited database of cross-linked data". Often understood as a
Described by
Freebase contained data harvested from sources such as
Freebase ran on a database infrastructure created in-house by Metaweb that use a
Development
Danny Hillis first described his idea for creating a knowledge web he called Aristotle in a paper in 2000,[11] but he said he did not try to build the system until he had recruited technical experts. Veda Hlubinka-Cook, an expert in parallel computing,[3] became Metaweb's Executive Vice President for Product. Kurt Bollacker brought deep expertise in distributed systems, database design, and information retrieval to his role as Chief Scientist at Metaweb. John Giannandrea, formerly Chief Technologist at Tellme Networks and Chief Technologist of the Web browser group at Netscape/AOL, was Chief Technology Officer.[3]
Originally accessible by invitation only, Freebase opened full anonymous read access to the public in its alpha stage of development and later required registration only for data contributions.
On 29 October 2008, at the International Semantic Web Conference, Freebase released its RDF service for generating RDF representations of Freebase topics, allowing Freebase to be used as linked data.[12]
Organization and policy
Freebase's subjects are called "topics", and the data stored about them depended on their "type", as to how they were classified. For example, an entry for Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former governor of California, would be entered as a topic that would include a variety of types describing him as an actor, bodybuilder, and politician.[13] As of January 2014[update], Freebase had approximately 44 million topics and 2.4 billion facts.[14]
Freebase's types are themselves user-editable.[9] Each type had a number of defined predicates, called "properties".
[U]nlike the
W3C approach to the semantic web, which starts with controlled ontologies, Metaweb adopts a folksonomy approach, in which people can add new categories (much like tags), in a messy sprawl of potentially overlapping assertions.[9]
However, Freebase differed from the wiki model in many ways. User-created types were not adopted in the "public commons" until promoted by a Metaweb employee. Also, users could not modify each other's types. The reason Freebase could not open up permissions of schemas is that external applications relied on them; thus, changing a type's schema – for instance by deleting a property or changing a simple property – might have broken queries for API users and even within Freebase itself, for example in saved views.
Discontinuation
On 16 December 2014, the Freebase team officially announced
See also
References
- ^ Google Plus. 16 December 2014. Archived from the originalon 20 March 2019.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-4503-4143-1.
- ^ a b c Markoff, John (2007-03-09). "Start-up Aims for Database to Automate Web Searching". The New York Times. Retrieved 2007-03-09.
- ^ Menzel, Jack (July 16, 2010). "Deeper Understanding with Metaweb". Google Official Blog. Retrieved September 6, 2014.
- ^ Singhal, Amit (May 16, 2012). "Introducing the Knowledge Graph: Things, Not Strings". Google Official Blog. Retrieved September 6, 2014.
- ^ "So long and thanks for all the data!". 2 May 2016. Retrieved 5 May 2016.
- ^ "graphd project on github.com". GitHub. 1 October 2019. Retrieved 1 October 2019.
- ^ "pymql project on github.com". GitHub. 15 September 2020. Retrieved 15 September 2020.
- ^ O'Reilly Radar. O'Reilly Media. Archived from the originalon October 14, 2008. Retrieved September 6, 2014.
- ^ Meyer, Scott (April 8, 2008). "A Brief Tour of Graphd". blog.freebase.com. Archived from the original on May 30, 2012. Retrieved September 6, 2014.
- ^ Hillis, W. Daniel (2000). ""Aristotle" (the Knowledge Web)". Archived from the original on January 17, 2013. Retrieved January 20, 2013.
- ^ Taylor, Jamie (October 30, 2008). "Introducing the Freebase RDF service". Archived from the original on May 16, 2012. Retrieved September 6, 2014.
- ^ "Arnold Schwarzenegger". Freebase. Archived from the original on 2012-07-03. Retrieved 2014-02-14.
- ^ "Explore Freebase Data". www.freebase.com. Archived from the original on 2010-06-14. Retrieved 2013-02-14.
External links
- Freebase ID (P646) (see uses)