  This paper reconstructs the Freebase data dumps to understand the underlying
ontology behind Google's semantic search feature. The Freebase knowledge base
was a major Semantic Web and linked data technology that was acquired by Google
in 2010 to support the Google Knowledge Graph, the backend for Google search
results that include structured answers to queries instead of a series of links
to external resources. After its shutdown in 2016, Freebase is contained in a
data dump of 1.9 billion Resource Description Format (RDF) triples. A
recomposition of the Freebase ontology will be analyzed in relation to concepts
and insights from the literature on classification by Bowker and Star. This
paper will explore how the Freebase ontology is shaped by many of the forces
that also shape classification systems through a deep dive into the ontology
and a small correlational study. These findings will provide a glimpse into the
proprietary blackbox Knowledge Graph and what is meant by Google's mission to
"organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and
useful".
