Alphabet acquired Metaweb, a transaction announced in July 2010.
Metaweb operates in Search (semantic / Knowledge Graph), is based in United States. Metaweb maintained Freebase, an open semantic database of over 12 million real-world entities — people, places, movies, books, companies — and the relationships between them. Google acquired it to deepen search's understanding of real-world things and answer complex entity-based queries; the work fed into the Knowledge Graph.
Improve search by understanding real-world entities and their relationships, enabling answers to complex queries; develop the open Freebase database.
The web isn't merely words—it's information about things in the real world, and understanding the relationships between real-world entities can help us deliver relevant information more quickly.Jack Menzel, Director of Product Management, Google
Advisory firms were not disclosed for this transaction.