Company type | Private |
---|---|
Industry | Data management |
Founded | July 2005 |
Founder |
Veda Hlubinka-Cook, Danny Hillis, John Giannandrea |
Fate | acquired by
Google in July 2010 [1] |
Headquarters | , United States |
Key people |
Kurt Bollacker ( Chief scientist) Danny Hillis ( Chairman) Thomas Layton (CEO) [2] Veda Hlubinka-Cook EVP, product development John Giannandrea ( CTO) |
Products | Freebase — an online database |
Website | www.metaweb.com |
Metaweb Technologies, Inc. was a San Francisco–based company that developed Freebase, described as an "open, shared database of the world's knowledge". The company was co-founded by Danny Hillis, Veda Hlubinka-Cook and John Giannandrea in 2005. [3]
Metaweb was acquired by Google in 2010. [1] Google shut down Freebase in 2016, transferring some of the data that met the required notability criteria to Wikidata. [4] [5] [6]
On March 14, 2006, Metaweb received $15 million in funding. Investors included Benchmark Capital, Millennium Technology Ventures, and Omidyar Network. [7] On January 15, 2008, Metaweb announced a $42.5 million Series B round led by Goldman Sachs and Benchmark Capital. [8]
Kevin Harvey of Benchmark Capital was a member of Metaweb's board of directors.
On July 16, 2010, Google acquired Metaweb for an undisclosed sum. [9]